A Harvard Crimson article from 2003 described what fate befell two Harvard scientists who dared to challenge Global Warming.
A study by two Harvard researchers quietly published last January in a small research journal has set off a political storm that has led to debate on the senate floor and internal wrangling at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The study, co-authored by two scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, concluded that the 20th century has been neither the warmest century of the past millennium nor the one with the most extreme weather.
The two scientists were subsequently excoriated in the strongest terms by Michael Mann and John Holdren, now Barack Obama’s science czar. The Crimson describes the reception they got.
Approximately 5 percent of the study’s funding—about $53,000 in all—came from the American Petroleum Institute, the gas and oil industry’s main trade organization.
Both Soon and Baliunas are paid consultants for the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington non-profit organization that opposes limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
Four editors have resigned from Climate Research, the small journal that initially published the study. According to The New York Times, even the publisher of the journal, Otto Kinne, has criticized the study.
“I have not stood behind the paper by Soon and Baliunas,” Kinne said, according to the Times. “Indeed: the reviewers failed to detect methodological flaws.” …
Professor Michael Mann of the University of Virginia, who testified before the Senate Committee, denounced the study in an interview yesterday.
“Serious scientists will tell you over and over again that this was a deeply flawed study that should never have been published,” Mann said. “Scientifically this study was considered not even worthy of a response. But because it was used politically, to justify policy changes in the administration, people in my field felt they had to speak out.” …
Harvard professors have also criticized the report.
“My impression is that the critics are right,” said John Holdren, Heinz professor of environmental policy at the Kennedy School of Government. “It’s unfortunate that so much attention is paid to a flawed analysis, but that’s what happens when something happens to support the political climate in Washington.”
Professor Daniel Schrag of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences said that he did not think Soon and Baliunas’ approach to finding a global average temperature was as honest as other approaches.
“The bottom line is that this paper is suggesting that the unusually warm weather we’ve been having for the last 100 years is part of natural variability,” he said. “We have observations to show that that’s not the case.”
What was so blasphemous about their paper? A synopsis of Soon and Baliuna’s study describes what they did.
Cambridge, MA – A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.
Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.
“Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades,” Soon says, “so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth.”
That conclusion was enough to earn them the opprobrium of Mann and Holdren. Here’s another image from the past; the late Michael Crichton on environmentalism as religion.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Well no wonder they got such hate. Anything with the Idso family involved is detested by the alarmists.
Here’s a Searchable Database for CRU Emails
(Dr.) Michael Crichton spent the last years of his life attempting to help people understand how science (esp. agw) was being made into religion by some. It (politicized science) now clearly has all the attributes of a religion, perhaps the political solution is to declare it a religion – since it demands its faithful believe, with a creed independent of facts.
Our political system respects all religions and doesn’t discriminate based on these beliefs, for or against. And as a religion, the state does not and is not allowed to promote one over another, or spend taxpayer money on same. (small giggle).
Amazing how corruptible all these institutions are. And to think tenure was supposed to guarantee freedom of speech and free argument (the scientific method).
At least free enterprise has competition and customers voting with their wallet to keep order. But for-profit companies seldom do basic research to benefit the commons. If we-the-people want to fund basic research, what new checks and balances can we create given even peer-review and the scientific-method has been demonstrated insufficient to overcome the faith-based dedication of the warmists. Dr. Crichton suggested that the more political the science question, the more important it was to use drug-testing-like double-blind statistical analysis of measurements and results (so those doing the analysis have no idea of the desired outcome). And if that’s not possible, deny politicians the use of the results in a policy argument.
Regulation, Law, or a Constitutional Amendment? (State v. Religion is Constitutional matter).
I see no reason to trust these people at all. They have given us reason to demand a complete reset on everything. They need to publish all of their raw data, and their models.
To begin with check emails #1047388489, #1047390562 and #1047474776.
What to do about a paper that doesn’t fall into the party line.
Forgive this digression, but in honor of our Thanksgiving Day, I would like to offer this stirring version of our national anthem: by the U.S. military’s Academy Choirs and Herald Trumpets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ETrr-XHBjE
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow patriots!
Charles Krauthammer: Climate bill in Senate, “It is a dead parrot.”
6 Beverly
Thank you for the link– I needed that! Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
It is getting to be a recurrent theme. At least two, perhaps more, generations have been schooled to believe that there are no facts, only constructed opinions; that there are no truths, only consensus; that everything is relative and everything can be deconstructed.
Thus there is no real “proof” of anything, only persuasive argument. So the burden becomes how to persuade, not how to search for verifiable evidence.
Yes, the climate fraud is a flagrant example (though we are already seeing how zealous opinion is brushing this fraud aside). But the climate fraud is only the most recent iteration of the bitter fruits of bad education combined with political correctness reinforced by those for whom genuine appropriate faith (such as the Judeo-Christian faith traditions) are suspect and rejected.
Such irony. Those most contemptuous of genuine religious faith are the most likely to disregard facts, create fake evidence, and dismiss logic and reason when it comes to their pet secular faiths.
Sadly, this latest pseudo-scientific fraud will be passed over and its causes not be cured until there are major changes in the culture and in our educaiton system.
“In a special report called ‘The Copenhagen Diagnosis’, the 26 international researchers, most of whom are authors of published IPCC reports, conclude that several important aspects of climate change are occurring at the high end or even beyond the expectations of only a few years ago.”
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20092711-20313.html
This has had a lot of coverage in Australia. I’d appreciate any background on it. Is it well-based or just another well-timed media assault before Copenhagen?
Watching the efforts to keep a lid on this, I’m very amused. I can laugh, because I think this will eventually be common knowledge.
Too bad for Hollywood – if the perpetrators were their political enemies this could be a Blockbuster film. It has everything you’d ever want. Maybe Bollywood could step in.
blogstrop: the key is the statement “Most of whom are authors of published IPCC reports”
The IPCC reports are the very heart of the fraud that has been depicted in the CRU e-mails. Not surprisingly, *those* are the people who are now being shown to have have colluded to mask the science and who conspired to thwart any FOI inquiries into their data.
Of course they have all been working for years on a juicy batch of “scare stories” that were going to be released immediately before the Copenhagen Conference in order to justify some type of draconian international limits. One of the best parts of this “climategate” scandal is that it has sucked all the air out of those claims, to the point that only the True Believers are listening to them.
And for those who claim that the timing of this leak was political – did anyone notice the acknowledgment yesterday by a BBC reporter that yes, he had all of these files in his possession for the last 6 weeks and he decided just to sit on them and do nothing. (prompting the anonymous tipster to then place them on publicly available FTP servers)
What was this reporter waiting on? Let me guess – he was going to wait until the glorious Copenhagen Conference was over and all the wonderful limits passed, and THEN and only then would he start thinking about maybe doing his job.
Well, now he’s just another tool. He got handed the scoop of a lifetime and threw it away for an empty ideology. Good metaphor for what’s happened to the mainstream media these days.
At least not *some* are starting to report – the WSJ has a very good rundown of the scandal and it’s effects here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499404574558070997168360.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
Buddy Larson or Luddy Barson or somebody alluded to the Great Awakenings in the CRU Hack thread. Here’s a discussion with a Hillsdale College professor and Peter Robinson on The Corner.
For those interested, Michael Crichton’s web site contains a wonderful lecture, “Complexity Theory and Environmental Management” given to the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy given in 2005. He is sorely missed.
For those interested, in 2005 Michael Crichton delivered a wonderful lecture, “Complexity Theory and Environmental Management”, to the Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy. It can be obtained through his web site. His voice is sorely missed.
Thanksgiving was good. I hope currently everyone in harm’s way allowing us to have a pleasant time with our families had at least a nice meal and a good word from someone back in the States.
Now on to Christmas. Ok, say I’m “represent’n’ but I just asked my family to forgo giving me another yearly subscription to Road and Track, a true passion of mine,( I have bound copies going back to 1959) in lieu of a nice hit on W’s tip jar. Many of you know I can be relentless but he provides us each of us with keener insight, neat new words, and ways of thinking of a problem that are unique. Many time solutions that, if adopted in Washington, D.C. could solve many of our challenges.
It is unfortunate most of us will never have the chance to look him in the eye, shake his hand and say “Thanks man, you have made me a better person” Since we will most likely miss that, the next best thing is …. a. gaudy neck tie. b. a fruitcake, or c. A HIT ON THE TIPJAR.
Personally I can think of no better, more meaningful gift than what Ben Franklin called the lifeblood of politics….ready money. W has earned it many times over, year in and year out, and I would enjoy reading him for years to come.
Please give this entreaty serious consideration. Let’s pay the man his due.
Thank you W for what you do and the civil manner in which you do it. I am sure your many fans will come through with what they can.
Best regards to all,
Habu
As important as Carl Sagan may be for the meteorology of Venus, his politicization of science is to be regretted by serious scientists. In particular, some of his comments in his series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” transcend science altogether and delve into metaphysics.
Although it is quite legitimate for theologians and metaphysicists to talk about science, Carl Sagan’s problem was “truth in labeling”. Carl Sagan refused to admit that he was talking as a theologian and not as a scientist. His comments make perfect sense from the perspective of a Spinozistic Pantheist or indeed as a Transcendentalist, but they directly contradict the ideas of classical theism and even panentheism.
The theology of Carl Sagan and especially Albert Gore Jr. appears to infuse Millerist apocalypticism into nature-worshipping pantheism.
I am still not averse to the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis; I don’t take it as dogma that it isn’t true. I also don’t take it as dogma that it is. This is a hypothesis that must be tested scientifically. Those scientists who follow in the footsteps of Trofim Lysenko should be seen as a threat to legitimate science. The problem that Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis faces is twofold – both the environmentalist and fossil fuel industries have a vested interest in ensuring that no real science gets done.
Let’s try to see where the evidence leads and follow the evidence. I’m not about to argue that air pollution is a good thing.
compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.
There, staring the world in the face, is the CONSENSUS that the green enviropoliticomendacious ‘elites’ refuse to admit. How do they fight it? Excoriate the messengers, and declare the exact opposite to be a ‘scientific consensus’. Stalin would approve.
Crichton’s notion that environmentalism has some of the characteristics of a religious belief-system is straight on.
I think there are some developments from this fundamental insight that directly fit “environmentalism” as a religious belief.
(1) He evokes the Eden myth–reproduced with different though similar plot-lines in other religions–and this is fundamental. The Eden myth is a “pourquoi tale” (i.e., Fr for “why” or explanatory narrative: it is a narrative that recites supposed events in the past that “explain” the current state of things).
The Eden myth details a state of human perfection which was lost “because” the first humans committed a sin. What the sin was exactly is less important than the notion that because of that sin human beings suffer “now” in current historical time.
It is absolutely true that Environmentalism is an ideology with a similar religious component: human beings suffer because their environment has been sinned against, and the agents of that sin are “other” human beings. As in the case of the judeo-christian narrative (aka: Bible), so here: the way to get back to the edenic pre-sin Edenic perfection is to pass regulations and laws and enforce OP’s (i.e., other people) to do what you want them to do. The result is coercive religion in the western world in the past, and currently it is environmentalism as a movement for essentially fascistic control over what people do with the environment. Those who don’t do what they are commanded are therefore “heretics” and “sinners” who must be punished, and the people to do the punishing are people in power who are sanctified by being philosophically “in the right” (aka: liberal democrats).
(2) People are encouraged to believe in the above kind of narrative-plus-consequences because they are afraid. They are afraid that if they don’t obey the religious rules of the environmentalist religion they will fall prey to the devil and be damned for all eternity to hell.
In the current environmentalist version of this religion, the devil is a composite figure made up of all the people and groups who operate independently of the environmentalist religion and are therefore not merely “wrong” but “sinful”: profit-making businesses, capitalist ideologues, independent citizens who think differently from the true-believers in the environmentalist religion (BC regulars can fill out this list).
What we are involved in therefore is a semi-comical re-enactment of a very non-comical past history: the 150 years of religious wars in Europe (roughly early 16th-century to late 17th-century) over debates and disagreements precisely on such dogmatic and doctrinal issues as those referenced under (1) above.
Lots of people died in these wars over just such doctrinal disagreements, and I don’t for a nano second doubt the willingness of the believers in the environmentalist religion to do just that if they feel the need to.
I appreciate all the techies on BC threads who tell me about the science and pseudo-science of “global-warming” demonology. But what they don’t address is what Crichton addresses: the fact that after all this, telling these people the “true” statistics and the “true” theories of climate change is not going to make a difference. These people need to be hit in debate where it hurts: in their fundamentally superstitious and neurotic fears, because this is what is driving them to do violence to the normal processes of human reasoning and democratic policy-making.
Climatologist Dr. Dr. Tim Ball and Judi McLeod discuss Czar Holdren’s role in the shunning of Soon and Baliunas in this November 24, 2009, Canada Free Press article-
<a href="http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17183Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal – A truculent and nasty manner:
Put two and two together..
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17183
John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar was all over the smear job launched to shoot down solar physicists Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon’s work
Baron Davis(22): Thanks for saving me the trouble of correcting the link in my post (21).
Re. Donating to Wretchard: On his homepage there are two Donate link buttons, but they lead to an error page on Paypal. I found an email address that looks OK, and I’ve sent a small amount to that one. I hope it’s a good one for him and not someone else!
What cometh aroundeth, goeth aroundeth.
So when do these two get their day in court a book deal and some payback moneywise from the ones who would deceive us?
Since I am not sure of policy on quoting from any of the materials from the CRU “hack” I would like to direct attention to an email from Chris de Freitas, the editor at “Climate Research” where the Soon and Baliuna paper was published, that is included inside CRU email #1057944829.
24. Norm
You can easily use you mastercard or Visa and simply leave payPal out of the loop.
So far even the acknowledgements have been underwhelming.
It’s as if the post was never placed. If you can’t afford money then how about a “Thanks W for all your hard work.”
So far even the verbal “atta boy W” have been niggardly.
Yeah ,yeah, i know …”Habu, we don’t like being told to do something, or even reminded that it might be a nice thing to do…blah ..blah….”
Save it.
Alexis/17–the best thing about Cosmos was the lovingly-photographed profiles of Sagan and the syrupy look on his face as he gazed upward at . . . at . . . oh, hell, whatever it was.
“We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory) (in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)
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“Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are…”
former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management– a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
(in interview with Grist Magazine May 9, 2006, concerning his book, An Inconvenient Truth)
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“Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”
Petr Chylek (Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia) commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland’s glaciers are melting. (Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
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“Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”
Tim Wirth , while U.S. Senator, Colorado.
After a short stint as United Nations Under-Secretary for Global Affairs he now serves
as President, U.N. Foundation, created by Ted Turner and his $1 billion “gift”
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“No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits…. Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”
Christine Stewart, Minister of the Environment of Canada
recent quote from the Calgary Herald.
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Carbon – For a New World Order, and New World Religion! with Mann and Holdren as co-occupants of the Tomás de Torquemada chair for Inquisitor’s General.
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OK Habu, you hit the right nerve. I just made my donation through paypal and had no difficulty.
Gratitude is among the most mature emotions. I am very grateful for the Belmont Club.
And while I am at it, I want to say another brief word about thanksgiving — both the holiday and the attitude. When I consider all the unearned bad things that have happened to me (and there have been those) and compare them to the unearned good things that have happened to me, the unearned good things outnumber the unearned bad things by a thousand-fold. I imagine this is true for most of us.
I am especially grateful that my grandparents, of blessed memory, were wise enough and courageous enough to move to the United States 100 years ago. That is certainly an unearned good thing in my life.
So Thank You to Wretchard and Thank You to The Belmont Club and all the enlightening and stimulating writing and ideas on this site.
Alexis @ 17
You wrote “I’m not about to argue that air pollution is a good thing.” Actually, AGW is not about pollution. CO2 is a non-toxic gas that we exhale. It is good for plants and is in no way a pollutant. But the US Congress recently DECLARED that CO2 is a pollutant! So maybe now it is one.
Real air pollution actually LOWERS temperatures. The polluting particles in the air reflect sunlight back into space. So the effect is toward cooling, not warming.
Greenies used to talk about pollution but didn’t gain the traction they wanted that way. So they switched to Warming instead. And along the way, they tried to convince us that the warming gases were also pollutants. Weird.
@17 Alexis: “I am still not averse to the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis; I don’t take it as dogma that it isn’t true. I also don’t take it as dogma that it is.”
I too am a ardent supporter of the classical scientific method of theory/test until you arrive at a repeatable test that proves your theory.
But in order to propagate this AGW theory the scientists with “skin in the game” have not held to the established criteria. In fact they have been shown to change, omit and skew data on a consistant basis to coincide with a specific ideology.
Just a simple mind test will give you the instinctive response that this is all makaka. It is simple physics. The sun determines our energy level on a global scale. The oceans are the largest heat sink by far. The human race has exploded many megatons of nuclear reactions and yet we have not been able to match Krakatoa in output. Much less all of the other volcanoes. The lava fields of HI produce more heat and steam than all of our generating plants combined. We are but ants upon the mudball at this juncture in time. Maybe some day in the future we will attain the power of such magnatude. But my money is on our destruction if that comes to pass.
More simply. Look at who seeks power through these means. These people should not have power at any level. They are Luddites in new clothes.
@Habu, First put down the scotch and then BUZZ OFF! You have said your piece and are getting to be like Whiskey in your OCD behavior. You aren’t talking to a bunch of fifth graders who need constant reminding. So unless you are privy to Mr. Fernandez’s quick books files. I would suggest you tone down your used car salesman approach.
I am sure Mr. Fernandez doesn’t need us gesticulating and kissing his arse on a daily basis. He knows we appreciate his hard work. He also knows he does this because he likes to. It is a labor of love for him and it shows in his writing.
I for one am glad I don’t have to scroll through 50 odd posts all saying “atta boy”. And I feel confident that Mr. Fernandez is as well.
Good day to you sir.
Religion is what I believe, myths are what others believe. I can see the plot of the story others live by, but I live in the world as it is. (One can/does not see the myth one lives in.)
The Edenic myth or “paradise lost” is the default myth of Western civ; original to Judaism, central to Christianity, Marxism, any millennialism, important to Rationalism, Romanticism, any utopianism, socialism and American exceptionalism (The American Adam). It is hard to not find, or as a box to think out of. The characters in the master play remain the same; names are changed to protect the messengers. Snake=sin =kapital=superstition=carbon sootprint.
Environmentalism combines a utopian reach for a new Eden with a good works ethic; the force is strong with this one. But the real binder of neo-religions, like real ones, is constellating the irrationals fear and guilt. Goin’ green becomes a conversion to a better life, I feel better about myself, my suffering (less) gives me meaning, let me tell my brothers,etc etc blah. (As the new Puritanism I hope this Green crap gets as stale and ridiculous as the original, in half the time).
Be that as it may (that liberalism and environmentalism are conjoined) the AGW hypothesis is not integral to the green brotherhood lifestyle. Because it can be framed as old fashion fraud and collectively condemned (and hands washed), AGW can and will be isolated, ridiculed and discredited without essential threat to the liberal myth.
Like the old ones the new Puritans have a right to their own rituals and beliefs as long as they are not made law for all (or at least for ME). But it is up to those outside the myth to keep the crusaders on their parish grounds. Cap and bells for Al Gore. Lawsuit for Jones et al.
When I was in my senior year of college I participated in an internship program with my state’s environmental protection agency. One of the projects that I did a lot of work on was a GIS study of low birth weight babies in our state. Our state has a much higher rate than an adjacent state with similar characteristics. The inputs for the model were a digital elevation model, U.S. census bureau data at a block group level, and birth certificate information. The statistician developed an equation weighing the race, age, educational attainment and smoking status of the mother and the mean elevation for the block group to analyze the recorded birth weights for the babies born in our state in one year. There where two factors that bothered me. First, using the mean of elevations didn’t seem appropriate – in a high altitude area human beings tend to cluster at the lowest elevation, not uniformly across the landscape. At very least I would use the median elevation. This weakness serves to underestimate the influence of altitude. The other problem was definitely an example of PC. The mothers were classified as either “white” or “nonwhite.” This classification ignores the well known observation that asian mothers tend to have a slightly longer gestation period than white mothers who tend to have a slightly longer gestation period than black and other mothers. Because the received narrative in the social sciences is that “whites” are the dominant oppressors and “nonwhites” are the oppressed minorities, the “white” and “nonwhite” is the ONLY acceptable classification scheme.
Whenever I see “authoritative” model results I think of that experience.
Habu #16,
This old gomer has CRS syndrome, and I appreciate the nag. Assignment fulfilled, and its true I feel the better for it. Not as large as I should, or any of us would like, but this is the time of year when everybody wants to stick his hand in my pocket. Soldiers Angels has just been there, and a few other pro-troop organizations are forming a gauntlet for me to pass. And there is a certain California “Caveman” in distress who needs some assistance. So there’s not as much this year thanks to Lord Obamandias, but like that proverbial can of peaches, we share what there is. And many thanks to Wretchard, and all the other regulars who have made BC such a worthy place.
At Charles’(#2) link I searched “Holdren” and the first item up was a series concerning this very topic. As Mr. Holdren ‘educates’ someone sympathetic to Baliunas and Soon, the one thing that torques my jaws about this movement, and this administration in general became glaringly obvious. What does a religious movement have that a civil one does not? A priesthood. Infallible and immaculate. The givers of the Dogma that the True Believers need to live their lives. Holdren places himself right in that transcendant class as he ‘convinces’ Nick Schulz of TCS of Baliunas and Soon’s heresy. et cetera. ad nauseam.
Just as these E-mails don’t prove the truth or falsehood of the “science” itself, they do indicate the motivation behind its promotion. What kind of argument is there against the raw desire for prestige and power? Peer review, falsifiability, truth, logic, reason or anything else will be useless against this, because it isn’t scientific at all. At least not in the “hard” sense. I see the incipient establishment of an ‘aristocracy’, though, in the Platonic sense. But hey, I can’t seem to find my PhD, so I’d better defer to a higher authority about this.
Some random comments anent random items above:
(1) Holdren sounds pathological–there’s entirely too much glee in his “discovery” that murder and fascistic politics are “just the thing” for the current world of human beings.
(2) CO2 is not a poison, is in fact necessary for the existence and operation of the life on this planet.
Just think a minute or two about this:
when confronted with a truth so evident, so simple, and so irrefutable as this, the discovery by a small host of educated people that they have bought absolutely w/o cavil into the notion that CO2 is poisonous and wholly destructive of life on this planet–this discovery is going to precipitate a crisis of belief devastating beyond imagining.
To admit you are wrong on this subject is not simply to admit that you are wrong–it is to admit that you are imbecilic simpleton. And not one of these people is going to admit this.
I propose that this war isn’t over yet: the next battle is not going to be one over whether the global warming hypothesis is valid–it has already been in the twinkling of an eye trashed beyond repair.
It’s like discovering the world is not flat: you can’t go back. What flatlanders did when that happened, I haven’t a clue.
32. JFSanders031
Ok, you’re nominated for the curmudgeon of the season award and the Scrooge award.
You’re one of those people who never say thank you , or I love you to any family member because you “know” they can just feel the love oozing from your every pore and to verbalize it would somehow rob you of your manhood. Well, I hear Exteeze will help you along that path.
And JF allow me to tell you what I’ve told others who get equally embarrassed by their behavior and project it on to others. I don’t drink and I don’t chew ner smoke a bit. What I do, at 62 years old ( and this really kills folks like you) is work out every day in my fully appointed home gym in my 3500 square foot home in Florida and my 3200 sq ft home in Montana. Part of the workout includes being able to bench press 300 pounds. I shoot guns, trap and skeet, and am not bad with a bow. Former Marines can do those things.
What we don’t do is buzz off after making an honorable request for funds for a highly worthy writer and thinker…but then you’d recognize neither, why?
Your words and mindset on display here. “I am sure Mr. Fernandez doesn’t need us gesticulating and kissing his arse on a daily basis. He knows we appreciate his hard work. He also knows he does this because he likes to. It is a labor of love for him and it shows in his writing.”
How are you sure? And who is kissing his arse? You’re dissing him because he has a TIP JAR that at least one reader/contributor feels as though he placed there for a reason ….. and you want to crap all over it.
I’m sorry it offends your delicate nature to be reminded that he daily does a suburb job and that the TIP JAR serves a purpose, which I chose to step forward and highlight during this season of giving.
You have my pity, and those who must deal with you have my pity also because you are blessed with a clairvoyance that few of us have when it comes to knowing the feelings of others. I hope you’re right about all the things you “know” about how others feel.
So I won’t buzz away but ask you this question. Have you contributed to the TIP JAR or are your good intentions sufficient to cover all the bases? Golly , I sure hope so, but somehow I have my doubts..
Merry Christmas,
Habu
P.S. I believe the word you were looking for but horribly missed was “genuflect” not gesticulate. Since it is the season where it is more blessed to give than to receive I believe I’ve given you a good deal in pointing out the TIP JAR. It’s been fun.
Another perspective on what we are seeing with these politicized/religion-promoting scientists…
I remember getting angry with the “hard scientists” who stood back and did nothing, said nothing, while the humanities got fed into the chipper (a chipper can reduce a 60 year old log of alder into wood chips in 15 seconds) by the deconstructionist mafia of feminists, transgendered-white-hating elites of academia during the 1980s and 1990s.
Yes, they, the “hard scientists” stood back and chuckled at their soft-headed colleagues in the humanities. After all, art & literature belong to the kindergarten of mankind; they are, at best, humankinds’ playpen where nothing of real portent happens…the hard scientists certainly couldn’t be led down the path of inane politicized science; after all we’re scientists, protected by 400 years worth of a hard-won scientific method; nothing could interfere with us. After all, we’re scientists! We only persue truth wherever it may lead….
Totally OT query to the financial wise men. I seem to recall that Dubai World was the firm that the Bush administration wanted to grant management over some U.S. ports. (The uproar of opposition to this deal, combined with comprehensive immigration reform certainly are seminal to preparing the ground for the Tea Party movement.) Until now it seems to have been CW that Dubai was a bright spot in weathering the financial panic. Now they tell me that Dubai may be the flashpoint for a second round of financial collapses. Coincidence? Any other entry in the Taxonomy of Creeps?
Konyok, I’m just a financial wise guy, but it’s not yet entirely clear wassup with Dubai, whether they are mildly overextended or perhaps been embezzled out of billions of dollars or are in a tussle with creditors and not really illiquid or wot.
Then again, it’s not yet entirely clear wassup with Timothy Geithner or AIG or the United States of America, either.
These are crazy times.
I agree with Josh.
We live in a world where governments of all stripes are printing and spending money and, even in representative governments telling those with oversight to simply buzz off.
Bernake said it to a congressional committee that made the audacious request to be told where the money had gone. Buzz off said the man, I ain’t tell’n ya.
I have no way of knowing but I believe I am on firm ground when I say that NO ONE knows where literally trillions of dollars have gone.
The powers that be simply continue to create money out of thin air, ruining the value of the money in existence and then moving on to the next party being given by Goldman Sachs, catered by the FED and courtesy of the life’s work of tens of millions of rule following , hard working Americans.
It’s to the point where if you don’t like it and say so you may be putting yourself on the gulag list. Not good.
Habu,
I have often been uncomfortable with things that you say precisely because of fear of a nascent gulag list. Not so much on my own behalf, though I have no illusions about the apparent anonymity we enjoy on this forum. I have worried about the Belmont Club itself. We have experienced a couple of rather limp wristed attempts at interference, most notably during the Georgian war. Also the stray troll strolls in. (Funny, we haven’t had a lot of sturm und drang the last few days since the HadCRU hack … )
Untangling all of the philosophical and ethical issues of speaking our true minds is way above my pay grade. I think that we have a Schrodinger’s cat dilemma. Full throated outrage invites unsavory attention, but mealy mouthed nuance and innuendo is impotent acquiescence. I like to think that I myself skirt the extremes, but, like I said, above my pay grade …
Ultimately, I’m hoping that Wretchard has identified the way out in the last thread – collapsing the social acceptance of the totalitarian tentacles that assail us. The very fact that he brings Soon and Baliunas to our attention is the counter meme in action.
39. Das
“Deconstructionist” or whatever, the humanities are interpretive rather than experimental kinds of learning, which comes down to saying that that interpretation which impresses the largest number of people in that profession as “fitting the facts” of a text in the most convincing matter “wins”–at least until the next sufficiently competitive interpretation comes along.
It’s all a matter of rhetorical persuasion and “victory” is always temporary. The point I’m making is that no one really “fails” in the interpretive disciplines so much as just fades back into the crowd watching the race and hopes for better days–and better inspiration.
In the sciences, however, what counts is the reputation for getting the goodies by “doing good science,” which professionally comes down to coming up with data-cum-procedures that others can reproduce and produce the same results. Where these people have failed is precisely by violating that protocol. They made claims but wouldn’t produce the “data-cum-procedures” pay-off.
In short, they acted like they were pursuing interpretive rather than scientific (=”testable-by-others”) results. When you do that, you lose your reputation.
And that is what we hear exploding just over the horizon: the reputations for being credible scientists going off one after another like firecrackers. It’s a matter of credibility–if enough people say that you have no credibility, you have no credibility. C’est fini.
In the interpretive disciplines, there’s always a next time because nothing is final. In the sciences, on the other hand, there is no russian roulette–every chamber has a round.
All the rest is increasingly desperate blather, something we can expect to hear more and more of as the next days and weeks unfold.
Dubai, against all expectation, has actually very little oil income. It seems that the oil is mostly underneath Abu Dhabi. All and everyone was expecting the one to cover for the other — that expectation has collapsed.
So Dubai, leveraged slave-empowered commercial developer that it is, turns out to be a sovereign real estate developer with run-away costs, evaporating prospects and unfinished projects most unlikely to ever see completion.
Hence, her paper is trading like a busted REIT.
The blow-back towards Britain must be severe: British ex-pats are its mandarin caste.
The debtors prisons — and bare knuckle collection retribution — are somewhat off-putting.
The fact that there is a two tier ‘legal system’ with Emirates — being muslims and locals — unable to lose.
They are also impossible to fire — and while it is imperative that they be hired as a sop — they can only function as sterile drones.
Going into ‘partnership’ with the royal family is like hooking up Paul Cicero (c.f. Goodfellas ) wherein you provide everything and the family sends the ‘crew’ on over.
////
A shocking amount of $$$$$ is leaving our shores via credit card frauds franchised by the Russian Mafia.
That is why Citi never sleeps: she needs to retrench her plastic credit exposure PDQ. Note the re-rating of so many accounts up towards shylock rates. Hell take the hindmost Mr. Middleclass.
////
By collapsing the small business engine of job growth; and taking the creative out of creative-destruction, Obama is imploding the asset base of creditor-America.
Pretty soon we’ll all be Chicago!
I think it was Richard Amory who once said, “”Shakespeare said he wrote the plays, his contemporaries said he wrote the plays, but since he didn’t go to University he can’t have written the plays!” they say.”
Well we have Climate Gate, ACORN Gate, the soon to be NY terror trial gate, the Fort Hood Shooting, the Health Bill (If we pass real quick we’ll loose seats, if we pass it in 2010 we’ll loose more therefore we must pass it before New Years) The SNL summation of Fiscal policy, the ongoing farce that is the Justice Department under Holder…….every week brings us something. If it wasn’t for the careers, families, and lives destroyed it would be funny.
b@45: A shocking amount of $$$$$ is leaving our shores via credit card frauds franchised by the Russian Mafia.
Aw heck, it must be the pumpkin and pineapple souffle. Can you fill in some blanks about the Russians and the credit card connection?
This credit card behavior is out of bounds. A personal acquaintance informed me that the family credit card had been canceled because it contained no carryover interest-bearing charges. My first thought was that credit cancellation for monthly paid in full balances was illegal. Guess not.
43. Konyok
I am unsure of the point you’re trying to make.
It sounds as though you would cede the right of free speech under the rubric of saving the type of forum specific for its amplification. That the words or manner do not ring true to your ears is no cause for fear, for to even use that word in relationship to our discussions here is a dangerous position to adopt …. provided free speech means anything to you.
But as I stated, I am unsure as to what point it is you’re trying to make. If you would dilate your statement then perhaps I could understand better where you stand.
#44. Volti
You are right of course; I shouldn’t try to press the analogy too closely. I was trying to say that American science departments were sneeringly confident that they were immune to leftized political gimcrack. It just seemed to me that hard scientists yawned while The Humanities tore itself to pieces – secure in the belief that they could not be likewise so torn apart because of their superior way of knowing knowledge. But now we’re seeing that science can be Lysenkoized, too. Global warming is really a “problem of knowledge” wherein different factions attempt to gain the high ground of reality or ‘really knowing.’ The left is nothing if not expert at exploiting shadow areas of human weakness – including science’s soft underbelly.
In any case, global warming presents free governments with a policy decision, requiring them to mediate between a small cadre of knowing scientist elites and a mass of non-scientists effectively excluded from processing the data. Usually scientists can make a case to help the government provide for the common good. With global warming, however, we have the spectacle of a small group of scientists screaming, “We’re all gonna die!” and politicians shoveling money at them like coal-shovelers on an uphill train. There is something really wrong with this picture. It should never be a politician’s role to act as science interpreter for his non-scientist constituents.
But that is where we’re at. (And while they were at it the politicians and scientists put the muscle on corporations to buy into their shtick – I just heard a local company, Medtronic, paying obeisance to global warming in a blip on our local NPR feed). “We’re all gonna die!” Is that science or religion?
Big surprise – modern scientists are even more intellectually dishonest than any of the Inquisitors who prosecuted Galileo. At least they new what they would see if they looked through the telescope even if a keen political sense informed them the sight would be too unsettling for the current world order. Oddly it was the bishops faith that failed them and not their intellects. God didn’t need Aristotle’s approval for His creation and if He gave man five senses and a brain it was because man needed them to know, love, and serve Him.
Now climate gate reveals that scientists have lost faith in the scientific method because it apparently will not confirm their thesis.
Hockey Stick hard coded in.
Habu,
I fear that there is more truth to the “gulag list” than we would like to think. Craig Livingstone compiled a data base of Republican activists and donors in the basement of the Clinton White House. Since then data mining technology has advanced and the Obama administration has proven even more partisan than Slick Willy. There is every reason to assume that this forum is considered as an enemy.
So, I sense a conflict between unfettered free speech as an abstract principle and the operational necessities to keep the Belmont Club intact as a resource that could become very important in the future.
About this time last year there was a lot of loose talk around here about armed insurrection. Shortly after the election I stepped out for a long, long smoke. The very idea of viewing fellow Americans as a “target rich environment” was abhorrent to me. What really scared the bejeebus out of my was the thought that some power mad little functionary somewhere was logging on and taking detailed notes of all of the catharsis.
I came back in when I saw Instapundit post about the death of fred. Of course, once one partakes of the Club, it’s hard to walk out again.
I am suggesting that sometimes the important things best communicated with a bit of reticence. When we speak of nuking muslims, for example, we help ourselves through the pain and anger, but there’s a chance that we might endanger the mission by attracting the wrong kind of attention.
Perhaps I am overly influenced by friends and relations that lived through the totalitarian nightmare and learned to speak softly, to recognize friends by the way they say things rather than the words that they use.
But, like I said, this is above my pay grade. I admire the bravery of the Polish cavalrymen that charged the German tanks with their lances, but I detest the inefficiency when they could have learned how to make IEDs.
I am not as smart as most who post here so forgive my simple analysis. Simplicity of explanation seems to indicate, when someone yells “The sky is falling and the only solution is it give US (climatology scientists/industry) more money (cap and trade)”, that they are being self serving and protecting their self interest at the expense of others.
Combined with the fact that the data is peer reviewed by the like minded, data sets not released for open review, and apparent,coordinated squashing of dissent, the only reasonable conclusion is negligence at best, or fraud at the worst.
I have yet to hear any defence of this issue that does not amount to “But the documents were hacked therefore it does not change the conclusions we made from them”
It’s apparent to all that the climatology community was bluffing, but someone tipped their cards and now we all know it.
What next? The train is alrady at breakneck speed. How do you stop it? Is this the Atlas Shrugged moment where the incompetant engineer orders the train through the tunnel causing the engine to explode and collapse the rail system?
“CO2 is not a poison”? Oh yes it is. How long does anyone here think that they could breathe air with 10% CO2?
Paracelsus said it best; “The poison is in the dose”. There are innumerable examples (including water) of compounds harmless or even beneficial in small amounts and lethal in large ones. And this applies to the Earth’s systems as well as to those of the human body. Example; UV radiation is essential to human life, as it forms vitamin D either in our skin or in the tissues of various forms of marine life. Increase the level ten-fold and land animals start dying – both by direct damage and by the destruction of land plants.
Is it not possible that all this applies to CO2, and that the level at which bad things start happening is lower than some people think? But no – some people, apparently mostly American, think that playing Russian roulette with the climate is worth it if you can keep your AC and SUVs running.
@54 — As long as it is still ~20.9% oxygen it doesnt mater if it is 79.1% CO2. CO2 is an intert gass, it takes up space in our lungs, nothing else.
As a Climatologist with the Al Gore Institute of Climatology and Grant Preparation, I will admit that there was some “fine tuning” of the temperature data. Some would call it fraud. But, let’s put that little fact away for the moment and contemplate the consequences.
If you don’t send me $289,000 in grant money for this month’s scientific studies and travel expenses I will rain down polar bears from the sky. Picture, a 1,100 pound polar bear hurtling from the sky and landing on the top of your gas guzzling auto – just like the commercial.
http://tinyurl.com/yglehu9
It’s not a pretty picture – and it could be quite expensive – not to mention hazardous.
Send me $289,000 before my demands go up! Or, be prepared to be bombarded with overweight polar bears.
If you refuse to pay Panda Bears will be next!
Aaah, another blast from the past. From post-LTCM timeframe 1999-2001 (sorry!! trying to keep up):
U.S. senators seek crackdown on money laundering
WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) – A bipartisan group of senators on Friday introduced legislation to try to crack down on money laundering by corrupt foreign officials and stem the growing flow of dirty cash into the U.S. financial system. … Earlier this year, the panel cited major U.S. banks, including Citibank, Bank of America , Chase Manhattan and Bank of New York, for being too quick to open accounts for offshore banks, too lax in monitoring them and too slow to close them down when problems became apparent.
……………………………………………………………
Credit card companies are laser locked on revenue streams from the fee for services business branches – no question about that.
#55 Vivictius – Sorry, but you are just plain wrong.
CO2 in concentrations over 1% starts causing headaches, lassitude and other symptoms. Between 7% and 10% (depends on the individual) it will cause unconsciousness and, if the individual is not removed from the high concentration, death. The mechanism includes metabolic acidosis and disturbance of the breathing reflex.
On the subject of CO2 as a plant fertiliser; there is quite a lot of evidence, from direct experiment (including raising plants in artificially raised CO2 levels) that while the plants grow faster the amount of nutrition from food plants remains about the same – essentially, the plants get inflated with water, and the excess CO2 goes mostly into making cellulose. Which isn’t much of a surprise; plants are adapted to the levels of CO2 in the pre-industrial environment.
If CO2 is completely inert, why does the US Navy spend millions of dollars on CO2 scrubbers?
FC/54
CO2 is nothing if less than 10000ppm, not a poison (like CO) to us and food for plants… and its ability to sink heat is minimal, now dihydrogen monoxide, that is another matter entirely!
FC, no one is arguing that pollution is good. But the difference between 280ppm and 380ppm is negligible in the grand scheme of things. There were times when CO2 level was about 2500ppm (during the permian and around) and that meant big plants and big animals (dino sized).
CO2 level increase is usually connected with other pollutants — like SO2 that readily forms H2SO4 that makes “acid rain”, ash particles (coal burning) and other stuff — so it is desirable to keep it in check. But this whole “CO2 is causing global warming, and god forbid if we increase CO2 by 10ppm… oh god, oh god we are going to die!” is entirely bogus.
RE: #54 Fletcher Christian said:
Is it not possible that all this applies to CO2, and that the level at which bad things start happening is lower than some people think? But no – some people, apparently mostly American, think that playing Russian roulette with the climate is worth it if you can keep your AC and SUVs running.
Get real! You seem to be knowledgable here, and yet pretend that the levels we’re talking about are somehow apocalyptic, and that stupid Americans are leading the planet to destruction cuz they won’t abide “the sky is falling” claptrap.
Anthropogenic CO2 makes up about 3.2% of greenhouse gases. The New Zealand atmospheric scientist, Augie Auer, wrote that three-quarters of the earth is ocean, and 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is governed by water vapor.
“Of that remaining 5 percent, only about 3.6 percent is governed by CO2 and when you break it down even further, studies have shown that the anthropogenic (man-made) contribution to CO2 versus the natural is about 3.2 percent.
“So if you multiply the total contribution 3.6% by the man-made portion of it, 3.2%, you find out that the anthropogenic contribution of CO2 to the global greenhouse effect is 0.115 percent … that’s like .12 cents in $100. It’s minuscule … it’s nothing.”
The acorn that fell on Chicken Little’s head was just not that big. Furthermore, her extrapolations on the acorn don’t hold any water, errr….C02.
52. Konyok:
“Habu,
I fear” …….. stop, please, right there.
Sir, I do not know you, nor do I know what influences shaped your life but what started out as a reminder of how much we receive from W, and in return have to do nothing if we are so inclined has now morphed into “fear” of making someone’s enemy list. And your “fear” is not simply limned; it appears vividly real in its influence on you. You have my empathy, but I simply cannot relate to that mindset. However it obviously exists.
I often do point to the Bard. The first quote I use today is from Julius Caesar, the second from the charming Lady Macbeth.
The first;
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard.
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
The second;
Macbeth:
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth:
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we’ll not fail.
Too many have gone before us and sacrificed everything for our right of free speech, or to do so many wonderful things others on this earth are denied. Few worried about being on a list.
I wish you well. I pray there comes a day where you find a place to screw your courage.
Yeah, RWR, what is it with these people and the “bad Merkins” stuff? When I was a kid, in the commie Czechoslovakia, everything that did not go right — it was always Americans fault. Went out of general fashion in 60′s and officially in late 80′s over there, but seems tools in other places bought it, hook line and sinker.
Energy consumption (as if that is a zero sum game — Americans sucking energy out from everyone else so the rest don’t have enough… energy is produced!! — though by use of natural resources — usually the finger is pointed at USA, but not true) Canada is #1 in consumption of energy per capita and USA and Finland are sharing the second place.
“We are all going to die”
Advice to those of an excitable nature, offered as a template.
Why yes we are. Is that news to you? Now stop thrashing about in the water and do something useful. Ideally create wealth so that we can use some of it for nice things like cleaning up and improving education, to a quality level we had 70 years ago. The correct answer is never to display poverty, ignorance, and bad teeth as a badge of honor. To do so is Onanism.
Is CO² a poison? Everything is really. The reason that living organisms developed elegant and sophisticated systems for oxidizing iron and transporting the bound oxygen for exchange with CO² is that the O² is a deadly poison. Many of the processes of life on Earth can be looked at as efforts to survive the corrosive effects of a high Oxygen environment. If the Earth had less free Oxygen and instead the atmosphere was a Nitrogen and Methane mix then organic compounds would be very stable. So stable that they would not need to devote scarce energy to Redox operations and the transportation and elimination of subsequent wastes. Fortunately our distance from the Sun provided the optimal amount of energy to sustain these reactions. More and the compounds would have become unstable and less and the complex chains never react.
@38 Habu: This is my last post on this.
I don’t care what you think about me. YOU don’t know me. The entire second and third paragraphs are nothing but projection on your part. You have no clue as to whether or not Mr. Fernandez even wants you to bloviate on every comment section of every post he puts up. I have not “dissed” Mr. Fernandez in any way, shape or form nor at any time. YOU on the other hand have posted angry, unsubstanstiated, and childish posts toward Mr. Fernandez at various times. You go on to “tell” the internets that you are Mr. superman. I do not give one twit nor a twaddle of your internet boasts. He has posted that this is a labor of love for him. That has nothing to do with you spamming his comments section. I have donated to Mr. Fernandez and will do so in the future. Whether or not you spam the Club with your churlish attempts. But I don’t need you to remind me, prod me or otherwise subject me to some juvenile attempt.
And no Mr. Genius the word I was looking for was gesticulate. Look it up.
You really should stop to think before you post crap about people you don’t know. It has a tendancy to make you look bad.
I do for others without the need to toot my own horn. My good deeds are between the people I help, me and GOD.
@Mr. Fernandez, please except my apology for the mess I helped create on your blog. I temporarily lost my self control. It will not happen again. Also, my apologies to all the other members for this.
55. Vivictius:
You’re confusing carbon dioxide (CO2) with nitrogen (N2). Nitrogen makes up about 78% of our atmosphere and is indeed inert* and harmless to humans. CO2 is toxic above a certain concentration. See the movie Apollo 13. The percentage of CO2 in our atmosphere is very tiny and well below that level. I think I saw the other day that it is 0.038%.
*I’m not a chemist, and I know that N atoms are often found in organic chemicals, so I guess it’s not completely inert. Also, I don’t know how to make subscript numbers for the chemical formulae.
Right Wing @ 61
Thats fine, but it begs the question of this whole “AGW” thing. Go chase the second link, (coded) (which summarizes the first, “hard”) at geoffb @ 51. Cheating, period.
It struck me when these people started getting attention that it would be awful hard to get the level of precision they were claiming (a delta T of 0.7 Cent. Degrees) based on the total lack of hard data for the period before 1800 and very suspect data until about 1900. But Im just a dirt engineer so what do I know? Now we learn that they had the data and knew it was good since they created it.
It is best not to question our betters.
(Tugs forelock and slinks away, smiling)
JF@65,
Well, okay. Habu’s call for donation was over-exuberant. I think BCers do what they can in their posts and their tips.
But I’d temper my chastizing, by recognizing that Habu has impressive credentials; plus, he’s really angry and frustrated just like me, and millions of other vets. Besides, I’d like to think Habu’d be a valuable ally, along with you, going forward. Unit cohesion is in order.
Styles, tip jar, AGW, healthcare takeover, Iranian nukes, half the wealth disappearing etc. all aside, what does the clarion call sound like? Inciting US in the minority to do what? It is all “mutiny” unless you win.
Most of the population views this year’s events as not-coordinated nor in-concert, but rather as political “blundering.” The Left likes folks to have that perspective because it masks their one-step-at-a-time, and because any forced retreat on any of their ambitions holds no consequence. They get to try again, using our tax dollars, and now a printing press.
OT maybe, but as soon as I heard it my BS meter pegged. Two-attractive, apparently harmless but finacially entagled gold-bricking, social-climbing, celeb wannabes “crashed” a State dinner at the WH. Even getting to shake hands with the One. The man being middle-eastern.
What was this a “dry run”?
Having dated a gal that worked there for Nancy during Ronaldous, I experienced close to a strip search, even on the 50th time I came by to take my friend to lunch/dinner/cocktails/home. IE, they recognized me on-sight; they had my backgrounder at hand; I held high level clearance(s); I’m not “swarthy.”
Given the current march toward self-subjugation, my conspiracy theory generator (actually my Cloward-Pliven translator) kicked on.
If one wanted an excuse to produce a thorough background check on everyone, what better incident could have been staged? And, all this NEW scrutiny will produce lots of follow-up checks by Homeland Security types, so we’ll need more of them. Might as well do one of them comprehensive overhauls, eh?
It seems so much like a setup. What was that, “no harm no foul”? If we continue to get apologies and Secret Service heads don’t roll for this, then we’ll know it was cooked into the show.
Janet, you have a WH call on line 1.
LOTM@64:
Well said, sir, well said. I salute you.
36. Danl Watkins:
if you type in “tree rings” in the searchable database above, you’ll see that they knew all about how the original data hockey stick model was wrong. further that the modelers who provided the original data for global warming had since moved on ie recanted…as Richard mentioned in a past blog on the canadian researcher.
programmer,
Thanks, I screwed up my super and subscripts. The Super is (extra spaces inserted) & sup 2 ; let us see if doing the same with sub instead of sup works for a subscript &sub2; or O&sub2;
No joy
I don’t mean to restart the “free speech vs. fear” argument, but I noticed that when I donate to a blog, my name, address, and e-mail seem to be sent along with the money.
Not that I don’t trust Wretchard with that information. It’s just an observation.
71. Lifeofthemind:
I tried using sub inside angle brackets in my earlier comment, but that didn’t work either.
Vivictius @ 55: I’m pretty sure that isn’t right, human respiration is very sensitive to increased CO2 even if it is chemically stable (not quite “inert”).
… can’t seem to Google to a clear explanation, this at least mentions it: Although the body requires oxygen for metabolism, low oxygen levels do not stimulate breathing. Rather, breathing is stimulated by higher carbon dioxide levels.
But that’s still at 10x or 100x more CO2 than we’re putting into the atmosphere, and I don’t think anyone even in the AGW camp sees any chance of CO2 going that high.
LoTM, oxyxen as poison, well, sort of… Some anaerobic organisms in an oxygen rich environment oh god oh god they are going to die.
They also tend to pollute their environment with the waste material that then shortens their life span as a their collective is concerned. Though, some of the waste is purdy yummy in moderate quantities to us, aerobes:
C2H5OH
But aerobic organisms made a trade off at the point they went for aerobic breathing. The corrosive effects and the propensity to form radicals were compensated by much faster metabolic processes and energetic gains that led to a rapid development of the branch.
It has always been my contention that whenever the Left is caught out, doing something harmful, they have a choice of two reasons to offer. Neither of which is of the “I’m sorry I was wrong” variety.
There is the “stupid” defense of “mistakes were made” usually by some unnamed lower level staffer who will be informed not to do it again or thrown under the bus if their name is publicly known.
Then there is the “I/we were evil” explanation. This one being true is never used. The truth is not in them, it burns.
It will be interesting to see who among the AGW crowd is to be thrown into the “stupid” bin, and if any will go quietly.
twobyfour: It might be useful to mention that in the era you mentioned, the Permian, the Sun was about 3% dimmer than it is now – which corresponds using very rough figures indeed to about a 9K difference in average temperatures, easily enough to cause a global ice age if other factors (such as higher CO2) didn’t intervene. The continental configuration was undoubtedly different then, too. Also in fact, the configuration of today’s Earth is uniquely suitable to large amounts of ice at the poles – a landmass at one pole and the other pole almost completely surrounded by land.
Using arguments about the deep geological past is rather suspect for this and other reasons.
Second point; fossil energy is not produced – or at least it is produced millions of times more slowly than we are using it. Canada uses lots of energy, sure. Maybe because Canada is a rather cold place in winter? The same applies even more to Finland.
I have a few questions. Maybe someone here knows the answers. If we took all the estimated fossil fuels in existence, and burned them all at once (assume all the heat would go into the equivalent of /dev/null) what would be the level of CO2 be? And would it be harmful?
Oftentimes the same people who push for “green” technologies also advance the argument that we are running out of fossil fuels (the “peak oil” argument comes to mind), so we can’t depend upon them much longer anyway. If this is the case, the problem of the growing CO2 levels should solve itself, should it not?
… just asking.
From their website:
In 1973, Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer Arne Naess introduced the phrase “deep ecology” to environmental literature….
Naess saw two different forms of environmentalism, not necessarily incompatible with each other. One he called the “long-range deep ecology movement” and the other, the “shallow ecology movement.” The word “deep” in part referred to the level of questioning of our purposes and values when arguing in environmental conflicts. The “deep” movement involves deep questioning, right down to fundamental root causes. The short-term, shallow approach stops before the ultimate level of fundamental change, often promoting technological fixes (e.g. recycling, increased automotive efficiency, export-driven monocultural organic agriculture) based on the same consumption-oriented values and methods of the industrial economy. The long-range deep approach involves redesigning our whole systems based on values and methods that truly preserve the ecological and cultural diversity of natural systems….
Accepting the Deep Ecology Platform principles entails a commitment to respecting the intrinsic values of richness and diversity. This, in turn, leads one to critique industrial culture, whose development models construe the Earth only as raw materials to be used to satisfy consumption and production—to meet not only vital needs but inflated desires whose satisfaction requires more and more consumption. While industrial culture has represented itself as the only acceptable model for development, its monocultures destroy cultural and biological diversity in the name of human convenience and profit.
If we do not accept the industrial development model, what then?
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The Precautionary Principle seems to have evolved independently of, and prior to, the Deep Ecology movement. I am wondering if the Deep Ecology platform will emerge from the shadows in the near (or distant) future. It seems not much of a stretch to see it behind some of Cass Sunstein’s thinking. And it seems not much of a stretch to see elements of the platform co-opted into a full blown ideological movement. In fact, I am surprised that the theoretical basis has remained so obscure.
Tc/78; along ythe same line, just asking, what if we could knock the temperatures back a few degrees, and then launched the entire global push to do so –and then a few years in find out that we’ve all along been heading into the next Ice Age, and that we’ve just ruined our natural defense, and now half the planet is doomed to starve to death?
We gonna get an apology from IPCC ? heck no we ain’t –they’ll all be hiding in their Bavarian Redoubt –the one Herr Schicklegruber started work on.
FC, sun was about 3% dimmer? Based on what?
Just ’cause you don’t know what to do with the excess CO2 does not give you a carte blanche to invent permian conditions to get your preconceived equations working!
You think that plants need a temp on certain level and CO2 to breathe and that’s it? Try to provide these conditions and reduce the sunlight by 3% and have another plant that would have the sunlight unrestricted and tell me what you’ll find. Crimini, that was a bio experiment in 5th grade!
The plants in the dino era were B I G!
Photons, my friend, photons! Lotsa’it!
Dim sun my posterior.
As for energy… coal is finite, but there is a vast amount of it. Oil is produced on continuous basis. That oil is dissolved dinos and their lunch supply is a myth. Oil that is pulled out from deeper layers has no organic debris, while more to the surface you’ll find more organic debris the closer to the surface you go–e.g looks more like a contamination. There is some mechanism that produces it deep inside earth. The wells in TX that were pumped out in 30′s are filling up again. Maybe there is a cavity underneath the Lone Star, with roaming dinos. Nah…
The production may be slower than we can burn, but it is ongoing.
But I were not implying that we are glued to carbon fuels only, we can use fissile material on a larger scope. We may one day discover an easy way to reduce the water molecule and have virtually limitless supply of fuel.
What buddy sez… Larry Niven, Fallen Angels
Paragraph quoted from Wikipedia Article on Nitrogen:
“Nitrogen (pronounced /ˈnaɪtrɵdʒɨn/ NYE-tro-jin) is a chemical element that has the symbol N and atomic number 7 and atomic mass 14.00674 u. Elemental nitrogen is a colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic gas at standard conditions, constituting 78% by volume of Earth’s atmosphere.”
The main point is that atomospheric Nitrogen is a diatomic gas, meaning the Nitrogen is bound into molecules each of two Nitrogen atoms. Atomic Nitrogen has five electrons in its outermost shell, and tends to trivalent bonds. The trivalent bond between the two Nitrogen atoms is what makes the atmospheric gas so stable. Takes a fair amount of jostling to bust the connection.
Free atoms of Nitrogen are looking for a partner to hook up with.
(Boy, it’s been a long time since chemistry class – but the Wiki article seems consistent with everything I’ve studied over the years.)
Actually, I am inclined to regard carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Here is why.
Throughout most of human history, carbon dioxide has been a lagging indicator of an increase in global temperature. That is, higher temperature usually lead to greater carbon dioxide levels. However, CO2 is still a greenhouse gas; it isn’t as if it causes global cooling.
For the past couple of centuries, it has become the custom of industrialized nations to pump huge amounts of carbon out of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras in the modern atmosphere. Even if anthropogenic increases in atmospheric carbon are not the principal cause of the melting of the polar ice cap, do we really want to massively increase the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
Do we want to bring back the atmospheric conditions of the Carboniferous Period? Do we really want fossil fuels to act as an atmospheric time machine, bringing atmospheric conditions from another era into our own? Do we want to take chances on changing the flavors of the fruits, vegetables, and cereal crops we are accustomed to, because of a shift in the level of atmospheric carbon? Do we want to stop eating fish and start eating squid? Should we start eating more seaweed? Should we start eating ferns?
Granted, I dislike “cap and trade” as a tax upon ordinary people. However, let’s not act as though a major increase in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have no negative consequences whatsoever. Those who simply let the level of carbon dioxide rise higher and higher will be held responsible later on, and I can see the damage that can do to American foreign policy in the long run.
Coal companies and oil companies can be converted into geothermal energy companies. I think the United States can promote public transit, existing cars can be converted to battery power, and an electric train network can be constructed for far less money than Bush and Obama used to bail out Wall Street. It’s not that difficult to accomplish. The problem, as I see it, is that a group of faux environmentalists is trying to ram through a system of “green” financial derivatives rather than doing anything that would actually work.
JJRedfan/83
Free atoms of Nitrogen are looking for a partner to hook up with.
In fact, they do often find oxygen atom to form nitrous oxide–N2O. There is a trace amount of it in the atmosphere, but apparently not enough–we’d be a happier species otherwise.
Alexis,
If the carbon fuels (some fossil, some not) are running out and already past the peak, then as their availability becomes more scarce, they would be gradually priced out of the market. The problem will solve itself and we would have to look for alternatives. In fact, a lot of people do search already.
Some of your suggestions are not practical and it seems that you live in urban environment and transpose the experience to other areas. But battery powered cars have their own set of problems. Battery disposal would be one of them and it is potentially an environmental hazard. The second aspect is that the electricity has to be generated somewhere and if you want to support a lot of electric cars, a lot of electricity would be needed to be generated, far more than today. How do you propose to do that?
Alexis, you are parroting a whole lot of bad science there – not established, and not likely. The proven relationship of CO2 to temperature over human history (say, 25,000 years), and before that, is very loose. And it is the crux of the argument, not a fact, that even all the dumping humans do has any significant effect at all. So it is unclear if the CO2 is cause or effect of temperature change, most likely effect.
twobyfour, it occurred to me the other day after another post here that the *established* (and only recent) rates of global warming, anthropogenic or not, don’t seem to promise real trouble for about 300 years. Coincidentally (?!) that is just about when fossil fuels will pretty much run out, at anything like current and linear projected rates, including coal and oil sands.
Now, I guess it would be better if we do NOT run ourselves dry of carbon fuels, we should cut back, get into sustainable modes, and keep them around for industrial purposes if not fuels for a while longer, but it looks like the economics of all these things will pretty much take care of itself!
Note that wherever “peak oil” is, ten years in the past or ten in the future, we’re likely pretty much sitting on it now, and the price is going to trend up over the next century in any case – again, forcing us to alternatives, AGW or not. The whole AGW thing will be one with phlogiston and epicycles in another ten years, I figure.
32. JFSanders031
A review of the biding shows you making this opening remark toward me.
“Habu, First put down the scotch and then BUZZ OFF! You have said your piece and are getting to be like Whiskey in your OCD behavior.”
So thank goodnesss you’ve promised you’ve made your last post on the subject of supporting the TIP JAR.
And on your use of gesticulating. It makes no sense in the context of the rest of your sentence but here again its another example of one who can’t admit when their fanny has been tanned out in the woodshed.
Now be a good chap and live up to your promise not to post again on this subject, please. It will be a relief to us all.
I would like to finish on a high note by congratulating you on making a contribution to the TIP JAR. You are a swell guy.
BTW, no need to fear me, I don’t keep lists, but the grimlins are gonna get ‘ya…booo!
Alexis,
The industrial revolution produced the largest increase in standard of living in mankind’s history, worldwide, by any measure. It wasn’t an evil conspiracy against Gaia.
Why would we convert from the most efficient sources of carbon fuel to geothermal? Even if it were doable. For political reasons? What makes you think the current vehicle fleet can be easily retrofitted to electric?
Because we can? Or because it’s madated, in which case all the cost to your ordinary people is imposed?
2×4:
Actually, rural areas in the United States are among those most underserved by mass transit. Regular bus systems in rural areas would likely do wonders for their economic development.
You are right that battery disposal is a problem; some kind of recycling scheme can be devised. The real problem, as I see it, is grabbing hold of as many lithium mines as possible. It’s the geopolitical angle that I see as the biggest problem concerning battery power (especially given that some lithium producers are hostile to the United States…).
As for electricity? Geothermal energy. There’s lots of it under our feet. Convert coal mines. Convert gold mines. Convert salt mines. Convert old oil wells. Where deep holes are already dug, much of the investment has already been made. Where volcanos exist at a relatively low pressure, we should experiment with volcanic engineering. I dream of a time when major powers jockey for controlling as many volcanoes as possible.
Imagine giant battery ships that transport electricity from island volcanoes to coastal civilizations. The battery ship could change the fates of Iceland, Hawaii, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Admittedly, this scheme would not help in the continental interior (where I live), but it would help in places where wind power is not cost effective.
Alexis,
Show me a geothermal electric plant that produces enough electricity for a city of 1 million.
You aren’t an engineer, are you?
See, there is this pesky thing called 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Alexis said:
Oh, fercryinoutloud! Mass transit works only where the population density will support it. Provide the transit and they will come?
For pity’s sake. You shall not crush mankind with a city bus!! Mass transit runs on tax money and public sector unions. You must be a planner. They’re the only people who believe in the imposition of transit. Follow a bus around. Count the people on it. Divide by the fuel consumed. Most inefficient travel available except for Al Gore’s jet.
Visualize whorled peas.
I don’t know for a fact that the Sun was 3% cooler during the Permian, but it may be true. Here’s why:
The Sun is a middle-aged main sequence star. As such, its energy output is very stable over billions of years. But main-sequence stars slowly but surely burn hotter during their life spans.
So global warming is real over the long term, and it’s driven by the Sun. The solar system, including the Sun and Earth, is about 4.5 billion years old, and life on Earth may go back as far as 4 billion years. The Sun has been slowly heating up during this time, but other factors including oceans, landmasses, and the atmosphere have been mostly responsible for driving climate changes on Earth. There are still other influences, such as the shape of the Earth’s orbit, axial tilt, and the odd impact now and then.
I read an article in Astronomy magazine a few years ago which said that in about 1 billion years from now, the Sun’s energy output will become great enough to cause the oceans to boil away, leaving Earth hot, arid, and lifeless. I can’t find the article online, though.
I thought it was very sobering to realize that life on Earth has mostly run its course. I am also intensely curious about what the climate on Venus might have been like 2 or 3 billion years ago, when the Sun was cooler.
I think what is frustrating all of us here is that there is more wailing and gnashing of teeth at the political level on environmental/energy issues than there appears to be rational debate about energy policy that incorporates economic thinking, strategic and defense concerns along with understanding the relative impact on the environment.
I would think that there would be less fear-mongering if we had leadership that would foster such an informed debate. While I was a supporter of Bush in many ways, I think that he failed here when he was given an opening after 9/11. Hydrogen cars? Please. That was a huge waste of an opportunity.
Hypoxic Drive is not an upscale boulevard near Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. It’s the human body’s backup system for regulating breathing when C02 levels in the blood have become chronically elevated, as with COPD patients (“Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease” NOT “Coin-operated Product Division” as the acronym was used at Atari Games…) That’s just to start with a joke…
CO2 concentrations in the human body are ALWAYS higher than normal atmospheric concentrations, because CO2 is a product of human metabolic processes. The higher concentration of CO2 in the blood in any specific patient is not the result of any microscopic increase in atmospheric levels of CO2, nor would we expect any such result unless the atmospheric levels were to increase enormously. CO2 retention (“hypercapnia”) is a well-documented result of known disease processes.
Normally, breathing rates are regulated by chemoreceptors in the arteries sensitive to CO2 levels rather than blood Oxygen levels. Oxygenation sufficient for survival can be supplied to a patient by “rescue breathing” – i.e., blowing the exhaled air from your lungs into the lungs of a patient in emergency CPR procedure.
Without speculating on Fletcher Christian’s motives and political agenda, readers need to know that in his posts 54 and 58, he is confounding atmospheric concentrations of CO2 with metabolic levels. The aura of authority he has attempted to convey by his use of dazzling factoids is completely specious. These are not obscure issues known only to the elite. You learn about’em in run-of-the mill first aid classes, EMT training, and community college human physiology courses.
I note that Mr. Fletcher is not at all shy to specifically address other posters with unceremonious statements as to their reasoning skills. Seems like when someone is misusing information as conspicuously as he has in this instance, it’s fair to characterize it as the act of either an ignoramus or a liar.
Does anyone have access to any reliable figures about any actual measured increase in atmospheric CO2 since systematic measurements were first undertaken? I see figures indicating an increase from 280 ppm to 387ppm, or a 107ppm increase since the start of the Industrial Revolution, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to trust information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Alexis/90
Actually, rural areas in the United States are among those most underserved by mass transit. Regular bus systems in rural areas would likely do wonders for their economic development.
I wonder how far goes your rural experience. But suspending my doubt for the moment.
Elucidate.
There’s an old story about Thomas Edison installing a turnstile at his property after people began to visit in large numbers.
The Turnstile was stiff, hard to rotate. People had to work to force their way through.
Years later, he revealed that each turn of the turnstile pumped several gallons of water to the rooftop storage tank.
I have working drawings of a large hamster-wheel arrangement to drive a generator, but my brother refuses to make his doggies do the labor.
Well given the total weight of CO2 in the atmosphere mankind’s contribution can only be measured in parts per million.
The whole idea of CO2 being a green house grass dates to the 19th century. It never took off because the scientists of the day ran the numbers and went, “Eh. Not likely.”
I remember that in the ’50s some of the same clowns/groups that pushed AGW were pushing something must be done to prevent the oncoming New Ice Age. (Send money to the NIACRU center in amounts of 5,10, 15, or 20 thousand dollars.)
Now, as they approach the peak of their success in selling AGW, it looks like someone is starting to check numbers again and to top it off their early ICE AGE! warning may be comming true.
The original idea on mass transit was to subsidize it to enable people to get to jobs and increase the size of the tax base and reduce the aid dependency. Well in way too many locations they went from buses to light rail routes to nowhere and then cut back on the buss service so they could afford the light rail crap for the middle class.
rickl, our model how sun (and stars) works may be incorrect. I would not invest too much into the current cosmology. It has too many fairy tale characters and epicycles.
As for permian period, the proof is in the pudding–big plants. You need a lot of photons. Period. No buts or ifs.
Mad Fiddler:
Im skeptical of anybody that can accurately (3 or 4 significant figures) state the composition of the atmosphere before say 1935 (just to pick a date in the not so distant past).
London being different than say Timbuktu or Canberra or Miami or Los Angeles.
The data doesnt exist except in a climatologist’s imagination. (Which is a pretty fecund place it seems.)
Our understanding of how the sun and stars work is pretty accurate as far as it goes, it’s not going to be overturned by a new theory that the sun is made of burning cheese.
I also doubt that there was any concept of CO2 as a greenhouse gas in the 19th century, I don’t believe they had the requisite knowledge of quantum levels and light wavelengths. I believe there was fossil-based knowledge of the Permian forests and such, and perhaps even the idea (how? I think the cores and actual air samples are very recent? speculation but no proof, perhaps) that there was more CO2 back then, but no causal linkage.
It’s really quite astonishing how much of even our common scientific knowledge only came about well into the twentieth century. Seems even more amazing how few people seem to have much of it straight, especially on generally political environments, like blogs and Congress and the White House and stuff.
–
ok alright I suppose discussions of politics on scientific blogs aren’t much better. sigh.
Mad Fidler,
The levels of CO2 are based on ice core samples. However, the medium and method used to calculate the level is unreliable.
There seems to be evidence that for at least several centuries back, if not millenia, the volume level of CO2 was around 340 ppm. Linky
Before wasting anymore pipe time dreaming on geo-thermal…
May we interject?
There is enough solar energy concentrated as RAINFALL upon the Andes to solve the energy needs of the Western Hemisphere.
Mass produced, cookie-cutter, run-of-the-river, Pelton wheel hydro-electric power-plants could be produced in the 1st world and shipped to Amazonia and the Andean foot hills by super-scale hot-helium dirigibles — atomically powered, of course. Fresh water ballast taken in at the head-waters would complete the weight circuit.
Energy storage could be achieved by electrolyzing the local water and then piping both gases to the leeward side: Peru and Chile. Electro-chemical processing on a global scale would draw all reduction operations to the Atacama with considerable savings on roof construction. Certainly the NIMBY term would drive towards zero.
Piping the Hydrogen in particular via mega-sized ‘garden hoses’ along isobars flanking the continents would permit mass energy transfer. Oceanic ‘gas farms’ could maintain even seasonal reservoirs of moderately pressurized hydrogen — isobaricly with changing volume as against the current practice of changing pressure. ( and very high pressures at that!)
Of course, all of this Hydrogen would permit the reduction of most ores to proceed in ways novel to us now. I particularly find favor with Hydrogen reduction of pesticides/ nerve agents.
As a side note: heavy water (D2:O16:H1) and heavy oxygen (O16:018) would come on the cheap.
////
Of course the world would look a bit different with Peru and Columbia transformed into rentier enconomies.
////
Here and there I read commentaries inre the difficulties in dealing with the ’100-year supply’ of domestic natural gas. Let’s not forget that it is not at all difficult to transform methane into ethane, ethylene, propane, butane and or gasoline. (2,2,5 tri-methyl-pentane, anyone?)
Let’s also not forget that methane makes for a perfect co-injection fluid for modern Diesels. One merely bleeds some at atmospheric pressure into the intake and emissions drop while ones driving range is extended.
With more effort, methane can supplant #2 distillate entirely. This already is current practice for stationary engines, going on forty years, at least.
Liquified methane from their very own fields would seem very attractive for the western railroads even now.
////
Alexis:
You suffer a deficit in applied engineering knowledge. Please correct ASAP before commenting further. Thanks.
Here’s an article I found recently: Climate and the Carboniferous Period
The accompanying chart shows that both temperature and CO2 were low during the first half of the Permian, and were roughly comparable to today. Both increased later in the period, though, but that happened before the mass extinction.
From paleoclimatology to the N millimeter per year rise in the ocean level to the idea of pumping CO2 into old oil wells this AGW thing has generated more idiocy than anything Ive ever seen. Its just breathtaking to see what ought to be fairly intelligent and supposedly responsible people reacting to a report of the ocean rising 2mm per year . Stop and think about that statement. It should be a measurable value, but is subject to some outside influences. What influences oceanic water elevation at a set of points?
1 Tides
2 Currents
3 Water density (salinity)
4 Water temperature
5 Atmospheric pressure
6 Worldwide average humidity
7 Wind speed and direction and extent
8 The shape and configuration of the body of water (in this case the Gulf of Mexico)
Add to those factors the difficulty (surmountable) of directly observing the value in the first place what with waves and all.
So we have to measure the elevation. Fine. Good to 1/10 of a foot plus or minus a couple of tenths. Whats it going to be in a week? Next year. Note variables above.
The statement that the elevation of the ocean has changed 2mm is nonsense on stilts, yet is accepted as fact and acted upon. The place is mad.
“Imagine giant battery ships that transport electricity from island volcanoes to coastal civilizations.”
There was an article recently about Fairbanks, Alaska. Being isolated from the grid and subject to minor electric supply interruptions, the entire city has battery backup — battery is the size of a football pitch, and is capable of supporting the electric supply to the city for 12 (as in, Twelve) minutes.
Now, how many of those “giant battery ships” should we plan on buying? Or would it be simpler to build a single nuclear power plant?
have heard this site recommended twice now this morning, on tv –it DO look good, as a compendium:
http://www.climatedepot.com/
Josh/101
We do?
Temperature of sun’s surface is about 5700K.
Temperature of corona is several million K.
If the temperature of sun is convection driven based on the current fusion model, wouldn’t that be rather the opposite?
Explain.
(And please no magnetic lines reconnection stuff. Ask any electrical engineer about mag lines reconnection to get that quizzical look at you, to get the point.)
105. herb:
Two millimeter rise in sea level? That’s hilarious.
I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the water level in my toilet changed by two millimeters. Not that I would even notice.
I speculate:
8 infall of comets and meteorites
9 outgassing of atmosphere due primarily to solar wind
I suppose thse would show in the atmospheric numbers, but might still be factors explaining said numbers.
2mm/year isn’t much and is in the error band, if measured for one year. However, if it’s 200mm over the last hundred years, divided by 100, we have to take it seriously, and that seems to be the claim.
Buddy, thx, linky’s pretty good!
twobyfour/108 – I think this is a physics 201 question which unfortunately puts it past me but it has something to do with how temperature is defined and measured, a big area of (near) vacuum can be “very hot” just because a few particles are moving through it very quickly – which they surely can’t do down at the surface.
As I understand it there may be questions about how and why the corona is *exactly* as hot as it is, but there’s no particular mystery about why it’s generally much hotter than the surface. The same mechanisms on a much grander scale explain all sorts of nebulas and other stuff we now see in these nice color-coded Hubble pictures. I’m sure all the models and theories need refining but there’s no huge uncertainty there, at least no more than regarding what it takes to keep a bridge from falling down, and the like.
The magnetic line reconnection business I think has more to do with sunspots or flares and prominences and ejections, not coronal temperature. And I wouldn’t expect my local EE to know much about it, different scale entirely. Heck, digital circuit EEs and analog circuit EEs barely speak the same language, power engineers are another tribe, and plasma circuits are quite another!
You want to worry about something, worry about dark matter. And if you get that solved, work on dark energy!
#95 Mad Fiddler
Does anyone have access to any reliable figures about any actual measured increase in atmospheric CO2 since systematic measurements were first undertaken? I see figures indicating an increase from 280 ppm to 387ppm, or a 107ppm increase since the start of the Industrial Revolution, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to trust information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Sorry–I don’t, but your question gave me a thought. If this rise was due to humans burning fossil fuels, shouldn’t there now be a very distinct change in the ratio of carbon-14 in the atmosphere? After all, the production of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is pretty well a constant over time. On the other hand, there should be virtually no carbon-14 in any fossil fuels. Most of it would have decayed long ago.
Has anybody checked this out, or is there some flaw to my madness I just can’t see?
And further, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution roughly coincided with the end of the “Little Ice Age.” Doesn’t some of the real evidence suggest that elevated CO2 levels follow warming periods rather than preceding them? The rise in CO2 levels that happened (?) between 1850 and the present may be just a phenomenon that is wholly unrelated to human activity.
#95 mad Fiddler: I was referring to atmospheric concentrations in my post. While Wikipedia is not entirely reliable, it usually is fairly so in non-contentious matters. In any case, it is known that whatever the figures actually are, a sufficient concentration of CO2 in the air you breathe is toxic and if sufficiently high lethally so. If that is not true, then as I originally said why do various organisations dealing in closed environments invest in scrubbers?
#99 twobyfour – Sure, you are right. That applies, however, only if light intensity is the only limiting factor for plant growth. If that is the case, why doesn’t the Sahara look like the Amazon basin?
“Events dear boy, events.”
Josh,
There is no dark matter. It is an epicycle, a darkwing duck, a fairy tale, and a fudge,because gravity alone can’t hold a galaxy together. Nor is there dark energy, it is just the darkwing duck quack.
Nor there are any black holes. These are nothing but mathematical constructs.
But there is a force out there that is 10^36 stronger than gravity and its interactions are inversely proportional to the square of the distance, as with gravity.
FC, I did not say it is the only factor. You need water as well. Provided you have the decent temp level (above freezing point and below the combustion point) and ample supply of water and a right amount of CO2, it is the photon that triggers the whole chain of reactions. If you have all three but no photon, nothing happens.
twobyfour, thank you for sharing.
Josh,
There is no difference between EMF in your circuit and in space. You can scale up plasma/EMF lab experiments to a cosmic dimension and there is nothing that says it is not possible. There are NO magnetic lines (ML), let alone reconnected (MLR). EMF is a continuum. Any EE would tell you that. Only cosmologists can come up with these ideas that have no connection with reality, like reconnection of magnetic lines.
And the MLR is used as a possible candidate to “explain” the coronal temperature, because nothing else comes to cosmologists’ minds.
Tcobb, the CO2 level has, based on sediment samples and ice cores, about an 800-years lag as the temp rise goes. If that is true, we should be seeing the reflection of the peak of the medieval warm period.
@ 80
This Bavarian Redoubt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTGLpqFGyYM
or this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8236Zjb-sK4
Alexis:
You suffer a deficit in applied engineering knowledge.
During the 1940′s, so did Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Robert J. Oppenheimer. So did Ronald Reagan when he proposed SDI.
How many engineers have even tried constructing giant Stirling engines within existing mines? How many engineers have tried converting old oil wells in eastern Wyoming into geothermal power plants? So far as I know, nobody. Before telling me it can’t be done, try doing it.
Alexis have you ever heard of cost/benefit analysis. Engineers have to learn it to sell their projects. You have to have the numbers. Where are yours?
#120 twobyfour
Thanks–I didn’t know about the time lag. But nevertheless, has anybody tried to “carbon date” the atmosphere? If the purported 38% increase in CO2 was caused by fossil fuels it should skew the results and indicate that it is much “older” than it truly is. And this should also apply to carbon dating things that have died, or have ceased growing, in current times. An example might be the last years wheat crop. If the CO2 increase is due to burning fossil fuels the carbon dating should indicate that it is much older than it actually is.
Are there any such examples?
Josh:
I think Greenpeace and Earth First! would definitely agree with you that I am “parroting bad science”, principally because my statements do not come out of their press releases.
Those who would claim that I am some kind of “parrot” ought to ask themselves whether one should look at data from bore holes, ice cores, and tree rings, or whether one should limit one’s information to press releases provided by Greenpeace or the American Petroleum Institute. At the time when I analyzed primary and secondary literature on the subject (the 1990’s), the evidence clearly showed higher average temperatures over the past century. To this day, it is quite plausible that man-made carbon pollution is largely responsible for keeping us out of another Little Ice Age.
One can acknowledge validity in some of the arguments of William Jennings Bryan and the fraudulency of Piltdown Man while also upholding the validity of evolutionary theory. Although some people would throw out the bathwater in order to throw out the baby, I regard throwing out the bathwater and throwing out the baby to be two different agendas. Likewise, the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming should not be presumed to be knocked down because (a) some scientists advocating the hypothesis happen to act unethically or (b) certain scientists happen to treat their idea as a religion.
I regard any major increase in any component in Earth’s atmosphere to be a cause for concern, not because it would cause the sky to fall (as Chicken Little or a Tennessee senator might claim) but rather because it would cause a shift in the living conditions for life on Earth. I, for one, am interested in whether carrots would taste the same. I, for one, am interested in whether the price of fish would go up or the price of squid would go down. I, for one, am interested in whether farmers in Minnesota ought to shift what they are planting in their fields. I, for one, am interested in whether the price of Persian pears changes because of shifts in the climate.
If there is anything humanity can do about at least stabilizing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it would be nice if a good faith attempt were made to keep the carbon level in the atmosphere about where it is now. The problem is that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere seems to have become a religion on more than one extreme.
Lots of dumb engineering ideas are not dumb because of their cost/benefit analysis, but because they don’t work at any cost. Like, perpetual motion.
The site New Scientist posted a really dumb entry just the other day, it’s a good site but they do that now and then. A salt/fresh water osmosis power generation plant! The “plant” generates basically zero power! FTA:
Discounting the power used to pump the water into the facility in the first place, the Tofte plant is currently producing just 4 kilowatts – enough to continuously boil two or three kettles.
If you don’t discount, then it probably consumes much more than that 4kw. OK, it’s supposed to be a proof of concept for what *could* be a profitable process – or so they allege. Looks very, very marginal to me.
Like I said, it’s a good science site, but they publish howlers like this on various topics, oh, about once a month, or so.
Alexis, really, give it up.
OTOH, blert posted some interesting ideas, not necessarily completely cracked! at least not to me, at first glance. the hot helium nuke dirigible bit is a bit of colorful hyperbole, I presume.
tcobb, I’m pretty sure the carbon-14 ratio is used in a lot of these climate reconstructions.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWI1MDg3ODM4OWU2MDE4MGI2NGU3MWYzNDcxN2RmMjE=
Mark Steyn weighs in, with a Mark Steyn-like skewering
***
let me see if i can phrase this a little less torturedly for them:
“Just because our secret data-rigging has been discovered, doesn’t mean that it isn’t honestly secretly rigged data.”
Alexis,
I think you’ve misunderstood. It is usually a theoretician that says something can’t be done because theory says so. With the caveat that there are some laws that there is simply no way around them, like the already mentioned 2nd LT.
An engineer would not object that something can’t be done, but the question is whether it is practical and economical.
#27
Habu, thanks for helping me decide about acknowledging Richard’s contribution to my life.
Oxygen content of atmosphere was very high in Carboniferous and Permian.
Interesting book by Peter Ward, a paleobiologist, “Out of Thin Air” looked at how O2 levels changed over the eons and these changes manifested themselves in life’s evolutionary response—for example, birds use O2 very efficiently and evolved during time of low O2; giant insects (insects just absorb O2 and do not have a system to circulate it internally) evolved in a time of high O2, died out when O2 levels fell
My point @ 130 being CO2 wasn’t the issue in teh Permian or Carboniferous, it was O2
A@122: Before telling me it can’t be done, try doing it.
If I may, some of the vitriol is coming from the failure of the much anticipated SMART growth planning policies in urban metropolitan areas, many of which bear a more than casual relationship to your comments. The most notable example of where it was tried and failed is Portland, OR where the stratospheric and sudden increase in cost of living led to the quip SMART means Send (the) Mexicans Across (the) Rio Today.
The energy proposals are significantly different from planning strategies because the quantitative analytics can be performed. And decisively so. Although political pressure still generates policy disputes – the green eyeshades Know.
If it can be done or not – before a single mound of dirt is shoveled.
Alexis,
USABLE energy depends on teh difference in energy states. A coal mine is not a good source of geothermal unless it links a boiling water, heated by magma, to the surface… then there is enuf difference in energy ststes to be worth going after. ASnd most of that is already being used or has at least been taken account of.
blert–
Andes sounds interesting but also sounds like the capital cost would be prohibitive. Not to mention the international issues
Marty, the levels of O2 and CO2 have a mutual relationship. Plants that absorb CO2 use the C+O(+H) as building blocks for complex sugars and release the excess O(as O2). Unless some aliens built a giant electrolysis plant to extract hydrogen and to have O as a waste product, the only other factor to produce free oxygen in large quantities would be plants.
Of course, if we were to build a similar plant and keep the hydrogen here and burned it, we’d end up with water as a waste product, so not net oxygen increase.
Since everybody else is going technical, the low sulfur coal mines in western US are surface deposits which means open pit mining. Just visit Butte, MT.
As an interesting aside, those deposits lost out to the eastern mines because, with EPA-mandated subsidies for scrubbers, it was more cost effective to mine the deep sulfurous deposits than the cleaner surficial deposits in the west.
this is entirely off thread, and for those here who are following the saga of the CDS:
http://www.deepcapture.com/the-markit-group-a-black-box-company-that-devastated-markets/
(for quickie, scroll down about 20 paragraphs to the “Conclusion” header)
…and we had thought that pricing error was objective data misinterpreted! Stupid, stupid us! Wonder if Goldman Sachs will EVER have to answer for anything?
okay, back to the regularly scheduled outrage.
Rural bus systems that connect villages to towns are relatively commonplace in rural Germany. However, they are not commonplace in the Great Plains. Although it is understandable that urban taxpayers would be reluctant to support mass transit for rural areas, I would argue that mass transit ought to be regarded as a service analogous to the postal system.
I would hardly call the United States Post Office socialism. If it is, then the federal government’s oldest institution must be socialist. Small towns often have post offices even when they are not, strictly speaking, cost effective. (Even the Post Office has standards, though.) If you think about it, it would be more cost effective for the Post Office if it stopped home delivery altogether and went back to the antebellum standard of expecting people to come to the Post Office for their mail. However, people like getting their mail at home. For that matter, one could ask what the point was to settling the interior of the United States considering the expense involved in doing so.
For those who ask whether I’m “rural”, what’s rural? By the standards of most American states, I’m “rural” because I come from a place with fewer than 100,000 people. By the standards of plains states, I am very definitely urban because I come from a town larger than 10,000 people. One should not assume that my desire for rural mass transit comes from living in a place with a subway.
Alexis, Germany…Central Europe, yea. It makes sense. The villages density is so great that they are virtually next to each other. It does not scale well for US, especially for the western part where the distances are considerable. You still have Greyhound connections, but that is not the type of transit you have in your mind.
The system would be rather expensive to operate.
Marty:
Am I supposed to think there’s no commercial geothermal energy from heat gradients in a played out gold mine? Is there no commercial geothermal energy from heat gradients in deep coalmines in the Appalachians that are hot for the workers?
Coal fires are raging under Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and North Dakota. The coal is already burning, so there wouldn’t be much harm in harnessing an existing fire (that is too much trouble to put out) for an underground power plant.
And that isn’t even including passive geothermal systems (which are admittedly expensive) and tapping minor hot spots like the Black Hills.
I doubt it would be necessary to create an artificial volcano to tap into geothermal energy. Besides, creating an artificial volcano wouldn’t be a good idea.
twobyfour @ 134–
Plants aren’t the only things affecting atmospheric O2 and CO2. The rock weathering cycle takes O2 (oxidation) and CO2 (carbonization) out of the air, and volcanism can add lots of O2 and CO2 to the atmosphere. Both O2 and CO2 are also soluble in water, and changing temperature can cause water to absorb more or give some back to the atmosphere. Paleoscientists look at things like the Laurentian and Deccan lava flows as significantly affecting the composition of the atmosphere. Weathering (geoshpere and hydrosphere) is probably at least as significant as the biosphere in the quantities involved and affect on the atmosphere.
Alexis–
The US Fed govt already provides subsidies to “nonurban” transit systems, about $450M per year, matched by state grants. These systems typically recover (from fares or user fees) about 20-30% of their operating costs and none of their capital. They are provided on the basis that some people lack access to cars and there is a social need to provide a minimal level of connection for them, even tho those funds would be more economically productive in other uses. But no one pretends that there is a market to justify them except on what are essentially charitable grounds. And no one argues they are a key to some sort of rural renaissance.
buddy @ 136: yes.
I was working at Megabank for most of the last year in their CDO division, and one guy there was speculating about, um, er, “opportunities” very much along these lines.
It’s filthy.
But for myself, I’m still more exercised about the underlying concepts, which I think are either faulty or fradulent – or both – even if exercised with all possible honesty.
Am I supposed to think there’s no commercial geothermal energy from heat gradients in a played out gold mine? Is there no commercial geothermal energy from heat gradients in deep coalmines in the Appalachians that are hot for the workers?
Yes, Alexis, sadly that is exactly what you are supposed to think, because it is the truth. Do you really think there’s been all this free energy sitting around there, waiting for you to notice it for the first time? There are basic science/engineering facts, that it is very difficult to extract energy from small differences even if there’s a whole lot of it available. And actually, the amount available in simple mining environments is tiny – you’d pull out the heat from the first fifty feet of rock in the first hour, and it would be replaced by heat from the surrounding area much, much too slowly to do anybody any good. Any engineering system is very inefficient, Google “Maxwell’s Demon” for some details.
And then, even if you can engineer a system to capture a few percent of the energy, you have to consider the cost and energy it takes to build the equipment to capture it. You really don’t want to spend a billion dollars to build some humongous machines that then can barely capture enough energy to light a few lamps, it might be more efficient to print a billion dollar bills and burn them to generate power in a steam plant.
Sorry.
Alexis @ 139
The burning coal seam on Pennsylvania has nothing to do with warmth in deep mines.
Answering your questions in order:
1. Highly unlikely.
2. Highly unlikely
3. Fine, figure out how to harness that energy (burning coal seam), convert it into a form of energy that can be sent where it has economic value, if necessary convert it again into a form appropriate for end-use, and do it all in a way that is profitable—meaning that covers all its costs including cost of capital and opportunity cost of capital. Maybe there’s a way but it seems… highly unlikely.
Yes, creating an artificial volcano does NOT seem like a good idea. Which is why there is a limited and fairly small amount of geothermal energy potential, and it’s near places like geysers and hot springs. Iceland has a lot.
There’s a HUGE amount of energy out there, but most of it is too diffuse to be usable. Ocean waves, tides, interior heat of the earth as you describe, rain as blert described, the huge amount of sunlight striking Earth each day… on and on. The problem is always that there isn’t enough of a gradient to make recovery efficient, often compounded by the source not being near enough the demand. As technology improves, demand increases, nonrenewable sources are exhausted, and our needs change, marginally useless sources will become marginally useful.
If some of us weren’t so spooked about nuclear, our (US) economy would now be largely uranium/plutonium-petroleum-methane based, with coal still significant but declining. This would continue a centuries-old trend away from dung, wood, other plant waste, peat, and lignite, each step successively cleaner burning and producing smaller carbon residues, all in pursuit of higher temperatures facilitating purer energy (i.e., hi-grade electricity at present).
This need for hi-quality end-use energy means we need hi-quality inputs, and that means a steep energy gradient. Example: If you just want warmth for your barn in a temperate but not frigid climate, you might build the barn on top of an abandoned mine and find a way to draw up the warm air—the slight energy gradient might work for that application. But if you want to supply computer-grade electric power to New York City, even that burning Pennsylvania coal seam can’t do the trick. You need very high temperature combustion, or concentrated radiation to achieve high temperatures, or cascading water, all to have very fast-spinning massive magnets produce electricity that then has to be stepped up to over 100K volts for transmission, then in NYC the electricity that wasn’t lost in transmission has to be stepped back down to 110-120 volts and purified (all the spikes removed). With energy lost at every step.
You just don’t get there (at our current state of technology and demand) with a heat differential of a few degrees every thousand feet in a mineshaft.
Lots of dumb engineering ideas are not dumb because of their cost/benefit analysis, but because they don’t work at any cost. Like, perpetual motion.
Yeah–as I understand it DARPA is doing research into tapping zero-point energy now. If it can be done it will, essentially, be a perpetual motion (or rather, energy for nothing) process. Its rather easy to say that something can’t be done. I am reminded of the folks who worked under Thomas Edison. One of the problems was to build an electric light filament that would be better than the carbon filament that existed at that time. Someone came up with the idea that tungsten (with the highest melting point of any metal) would be ideal for the filament. What the poor stupid bastard didn’t understand was that, according to the metallurgical gurus of the day, it was impossible to work tungsten into a wire. He, not knowing that (or perhaps knowing but not caring), managed to do just that.
“What everybody knew” was wrong. What a concept.
To understand what Twobyfour is talking about in terms of an alternate theory of how the universe works, take a look at:
http://www.jamesphogan.com/talks/talks.php
As for me, this concept is at least thought provoking. But whether you take the currently accepted model or the cosmic electricity model I cannot myself figure out why a solar system would NOT act like a gigantic vaccuum tube.
But then, I have just spent the past several hours staring at some of those critters and trying to figure out why they are not working as they should.
I wrote this a few years ago unsure of what I wanted to say. Mostly I suppose it was to unclutter my befuddled mind. That didn’t work. If scientific endeavors and inquiry were but clear and concise maybe that would help me.
Snow Zone Ozone
First they warned us of a new ice age,
“The glaciers are coming!
The glaciers are coming!
They’ll be here any day,
It’s a new ice age!”
We all heard them say.
Then they warned us of nuclear winter.
When nukes start to puff we’d be covered with dust
Like ancient creatures of old.
We’d choke on the dust
And freeze in the muck,
Stranded like mummies in the cold.
“It’s a black nuclear winter!”
We all heard them say.
Now they tell us we may be stuck
Deep down in the snow zone
Without ozone
Over the infamous South Pole!
And with the greenhouse effect sure as heck,
We’ll be cooked right down to the bone,
For without ozone down deep in the snow zone
We don’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell.
If it’s all the same to you,
I’d rather not cook in a primordial stew,
And ripen in the heat and burst.
I’d rather all hell freeze over first.
Please just put me down as pretty much agreeing with everything Marty said about the difficulty of getting useful energy from diffuse sources. The three laws of thermodynamics are not mocked.
Best wishes to all.
As a blast from the past, the German language movie “Farewell to Lenin” really sums up the whole environmental movement since from Earth day to the present.
Ya gotta love the notion of drill now, drill lots but most importantly drill baby drill…, until the rest of the stuff can be worked out or built up. Nuclear is not ready, time lag for construction and certainly a huge lag on court induced delays. But there are a lot of good solutions, that the right set of incentives…free market capitalism?…would allow the most competitive to rise to the top.
Most of all the notion that time is on our side as a planet is one that needs to be accepted and not the fear mongering of the greens.
Tcobb:
Metallurgy also seems to be the main obstacle to advances in designs for the Stirling engine.
Let’s not knock knowledge, but I’m somehow reminded of the tactics of Andre Jomini and how General Grant disregarded them. The West Point educated officer corps of both the Union and Confederacy had been required to read the work of Andre Jomini. Ulysses S. Grant was a poor student at the bottom of his class. His genius is that he didn’t read Jomini’s work. General Grant won.
Alexis @ 149–
I wouldn’t suggest Grant won because he didn’t read Jomini. For one thing, he certainly did, as did Lee and Jackson and Thomas and McClellan and virtually all the West Point-trained generals on both sides, successes and failures alike. They all read Jomini, couldn’t get out of West Point without it; that isn’t a variable that discriminates success from failure. T. Harry Williams was pretty negative about Jomini’s effect on Civil War generalship, but other students not nearly as much.
It’s not as if Jomini was stupid or universally wrong. Clausewitz has aged better, but Jomini still bears study.
Maybe more accurate to suggest Grant (and Sherman) took their Jomini and built something on top of it, well-aligned to the war at hand, whereas some others either misinterpreted Jomini, or pursued Jominian ideas that were in error or inapplicable, and generally failed to see how different circumstances required different approaches.
Plus, Grant had nerves of steel, which as much as his strategic or operational skill made a huge difference, as after the first days of Shiloh and Wilderness. Just my opinion.
If I remember right from old war gaming of the Soviets invading Nato, the average distance between German villages is 3000 meters, about 2 miles. Bicycles and buses make sense in that environment. Rural US not so much.
zero point energy …
… is for the likes of 0bama. I like Stargate as well as the next guy, but this is utter crackpot stuff.
Yes, DARPA and other legit agencies will now and then put a few bucks into crackpot theories, just to make sure. Always want to keep an open mind.
(I recall them putting some money into this, must be thirty years ago, some wack job up in Montana, I think, it was only about $50k but you have to wince a little at the waste of even such modest amounts of money on this stuff)
BUT – and this is a BIG BUT – we really do have a whole bunch of VERY WELL ESTABLISHED science these days, that it does you NO GOOD AT ALL to question. There is an open mind, and there is an airhead, and do not mistake the one for the other.
Our POTUS during the campaign famously said, “Just give the scientists a goal, and they will do it.” Yes, there are some swell scifi stories along those lines from the 1950s, good old Yankee American can-do attitude. But there is also Marxist science that gives rise to crackpots like Lysenko, basically the idea that politics trumps science. It doesn’t.
That’s why this CRU stuff bites – it threatens to discredit science overall, as seen in all too many posts on this thread. But established science is waaaaay better than 99.99999% of the alternative ideas out there, and among other reasons, that’s exactly why it is established science. If you really think you have something that is better than 99.99999% of what you were taught in school, go ahead, but face it, you have about a 99.99999% chance of being dead bang wrong.
–
btw, you will be hard-pressed to present a crackpot theory, like the electric universe, that I have not already read. loves me some crackpots, even knowing what they are, and the ideas usually come from or go to scifi, that I’ve read an awful lot of (just as Stargate didn’t invent the ZPM idea, see above). and I do my own share of icon-busting. but I’m really shocked at the degrees of scientic ignorance being advanced into the opening caused by these CRU bastards, it *almost* makes their case.
In 1939, nuclear energy wasn’t commercially viable. Based on that history, it would be easy to suppose that nuclear energy wouldn’t have much future in the United States.
According to Wikipedia, the United States has 3,040.27 MW of installed capacity of geothermal power. It isn’t much, but it isn’t nothing either.
M/150; spot on –on the night of crisis at Shiloh, he rode in late to his HQ (he’d been reconning) to find the room full of jumpy generals waiting for skedaddle orders –most had been routed that day and entire units were scattered along the riverbank looking for rescue steamers. Breaking the ice when Grant entered the room, someone said “Well, they sure gave us hell today” (or something to that effect), Grant, pulling off his gloves and looking around, smiled “Yep…lick ‘em tomorrow though.”
In most of the world, the most important variable in population density is the amount of water available. However, water is not the only variable.
In well-watered parts of the American Midwest and West, population density does not correspond to the amount of water or to the fertility of the soil. These regions are sparsely populated, and this is no accident.
One of the main reasons why village density in France and Germany is so high is because of the high agricultural subsidies and tariffs of European countries to protect their small family farms. If France and Germany had the same agricultural policies as the United States, chances are that there wouldn’t be nearly so many villages and that ones that would exist would be much further apart.
The lower population density of the American interior should not be considered to be a function of natural causes, but rather as a result of key decisions made in Washington about what kind of society the United States ought to be. If economic viability were the principal variable in American planning (and yes, the federal government has been planning aspects of our economy for nearly its entire existence), maritime trade would have gotten far more attention than settlement of the interior during the nineteenth century.
Alexis @ 153–Yes, 3000MW (I take your word for it) is indeed not nothing. But most of the significant opportunities (at current prices and technology, of course) have already been exploited.
1939–Gee, I’m re-reading Rhodes’s The Making of The Atom Bomb right now. Yes, nuclear energy wasn’t viable in 1939; plutoniuym hadn’t even been discovered and uranium had only just been fissioned in microscopic quantities and while a few people understood a chain reaction was theoretically posisble, no one knew which if any actual materials would do the trick. But there were specific questions for which people were seeking answers.
I’m not aware of anyone putting the question at that time and being told categorically it would violate, say, a law of thermodynamics. Yes, we learn new things all the time and “never say never” is good advice, but some things are so far out of the box as to require either a total different understanding of the universe, or be generational in timeframe. Nuclear energy in 1939 was neither, to the people who were really close to it.
Zero point energy as a source of USEFUL energy that can perform WORK, OTH, seems highly unlikely. I won’t say impossible, that would be rash and uncalled for, but highly unlikely and certainly no time soon. Its advocates seem mostly to be updated version of the ones who a generation or 2 ago hawked the “100-mpg water carburetor” (try goggling that if you’ve never heard of it) that supposedly big oil and the auto companies were suppressing.
Alexis @ 155—
Generally, what you write is true to a considerable degree, but that’s just saying if you pour in enough govt subsidy you can create any development pattern and set of regional economic relationships. Which rather begs the question of whether highly-subsidized rural public transit would be a worthwhile thing or get much use.
Not sure I agree with your last point, what is your basis for saying a pre-industrial US economy should have opened itself up to European competition it couldn’t meet, while not pursuing its comparative advantage of a largely empty continent (apologies to the Native Americans, but they were decimated by disease and we have to look at this from a 19th C point of view to undertsnad the options as seen at the time) with fertile land and good interior river communications? Maritime issues got a lot of attention, anyway, they were about all New Enghland cared about and also critical to the Southern monoculture plantations after about 1820, so I’m interpretng what you said to mean lower tariffs.
buddy larsen @ 154–
Thanks. And of course after Lee whipped Grant in the first day at Wilderness, as badly as Lee and Jackson had whipped Hooker a year before, the whole Army of the Potomac expected to (once again) retreat behind the Rappahannock. When they got to the crossroads near Chancellorsville and turned south instead of north, they cheered.
Of course, half of the ones who crossed the Rappahannock ca. May 3 were casualties by the time the lines settled outside Petersburg a couple of months later. But Lee never again had the strategic initiative.
zero point energy …
… is for the likes of 0bama. I like Stargate as well as the next guy, but this is utter crackpot stuff.
Yes, DARPA and other legit agencies will now and then put a few bucks into crackpot theories, just to make sure. Always want to keep an open mind.
Ah yes–and there were people who “proved” that it was impossible to create a rocket that could achieve escape velocity. Wrong—stupid.
You do have to look out for crackpot theories. Some of them, like the notion that the earth rotates around the sun, rather than the reverse, just might be true.
But the WISE know better. But then again , I have high standards—anybody who claims they are wise has demonstrated beyond all doubt that they are not.
RE: Grant
not to mention floating his army under the guns of Vicksburg and cutting loose from his supply lines to attack Jackson, MS and then double back.
Nerves of steel. Notwithstanding a brief cry in his tent at Wilderness.
M/160; …and in some ways the truest test of all, he sorted among the hundred ways to handle April of 1865, and found the very best.
At Appomattox the two commanders of the two American armies walked out of the house and into history with the great dignity and humanity that only the victor had the power to so grace that new beginning.
Re: the global warm-ists:
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
G.K. Chesterton (from wikiquote)
Marty (157):
Although my comment about “maritime trade” did refer to commercial exploitation of fish and whale blubber, I was referring more specifically to Alfred Thayer Mahan’s influence upon Theodore Roosevelt.
Although the United States partially recovered its naval power under the Jackson administration, it had been a dismal naval power during the War of 1812. Still, if the United States had concentrated upon naval power rather than hiding behind British naval supremacy (in other words, if it had heeded Mahan’s words one century earlier), it would have become a very different kind of republic (or confederacy).
Strictly speaking, I estimate there was more money to be made in the China trade than even in the fur trade, let alone the settlement of the interior. Indeed, Astor was important in this. I estimate that if the United States had concentrated more of its resources upon building and maintaining a strong navy to help capture and keep maritime trade, the United States could have been fighting the Opium War against China rather than Britain.
Increasing America’s market share in the China trade would have been highly lucrative. I think bullying China would have been more cost effective than, say, the Seminole War. Overall, I think the United States would have gotten richer faster if it had concentrated upon becoming a maritime empire rather than a continental empire. I’m not saying the United States would have been better, merely richer and more envied at a faster pace.
By the way, it is rather amusing that John C. Calhoun was originally in favor of high tariffs so long as he thought he had a real chance of becoming the President of the United States. It was only after Andrew Jackson beat him to the office that he turned against tariffs and promoted the idea of “nullification” (although it did grate on Calhoun’s nerves that northern manufacturers had been a bit too enthusiastic about the tariffs he proposed).
Josh,
I don’t know much about ZPE. Did not study the stuff to have an opinion one way or another. I know of some experiments that may be related and they demonstrate something that does not fit. Whether it is ZPE, not so sure.
As for the cosmology… the current model is not that old. Every day, you’d find in science news a phrase “scientists were puzzled” or an equivalent of it thereof. If you had a model that was 99% accurate reflection of real stuff out there, you should get a confirmation of the model day by day. But alas, it seems to be just the opposite, new epicycles have to be applied, renormalizations inserted into equations to account for the newly discovered phenomena.
No one showed me yet one picture of a star forming from an accretion disk or via a gravitational collapse of a gas cloud. The asteroid belt seems to be as old as our solar system, yet you don’t have a planet there instead that should have enough time to coalesce, instead, you can see from time to time asteroids smashing together and dispersing the debris further. The stupid things won’t coalesce, damn it!
Yet I could go through Hubble pictures and find you probably a thousand of instances of stars forming through a z-pinch. You see them lighting up as a string of pearls along the plasma filaments that are called Birkeland currents.
I were convinced, maybe 10 years ago, like you, that what I was taught at school is true, or at least 99% corresponding model of what is out there. The science is “settled”. Boy, what that reminds me of?
But I’ve noticed the frequent discrepancies, the models inability to account for newly discovered phenomena… way too many puzzlements. Some doubts creeped in earlier, after the Saturn rings were photographed and that incomprehensible twisted one was found… But I thought… maybe that’s the 1% we still don’t know it yet.
And then I saw images of the sun spots, close ups. That moment it downed on me we had it all wrong.
The Electric/Plasma Universe is a model. It seems to have better predictive abilities than the current model. Where there is a puzzlement in mainstream cosmology, I see a confirmation for the electric model that predicted the discovery.
I am not much of an theorist. More of an engineering type. Habeas corpus, show me the body. The math can be often beautiful, but that does not mean it is reflected in reality. The equations that are used as a supportive construct for the existence of black holes is essentially a divide by zero concept. In fact, the concept of the black hole is a more stargatish concept than not.
The current cosmology, with its epicycles and fudges in the form of dark matter and black holes is quite like the AGW in its modus operandi. Theoretical and often political considerations beat the stuff you can touch, beat the data.
Show me the data.
Found the code for subscripts for CO₂ I use [& # 8322 ;], spaces inserted on the key bits the brackets are of course superfluous. Here is the URL, http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/mathchart.html
LoTM, you can do 2 and 3, but not 4,5 or 6. So, if you want to write down a formula for ethylalcohol, you are SOL.
The editor should allow for the sub / sub and sup /sup tags.
Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.
Seriously, it pains me to see this squabbling among folks who–at least in terms of the big picture–are on the same team.
Alexis (136), you speak of rural Germany, but all of Germany is only as big as Iowa plus Nebraska. Meanwhile their population is a bit less than 6% of Germany’s. Different animal even before we consider how much lower our levels of acceptable taxpayer subsidy are going to be.
Useful energy from diffuse sources? It all depends on what you are going to use it for.
District heat and power schemes are quite popular in some places in Europe. The waste hot water at about 75 C is useless for power generation; it’s extremely useful for space heating. Solar panels on your roof for power generation? Forget it. Solar radiators to heat your hot water supply? That works. I’m sure anyone here can think of other examples. The point is that diffuse sources of energy can be useful in two ways; when the requirement is for low-grade energy (mostly for space heating and heating washing water) or when you can easily and cheaply collect the diffuse energy.
The latter only works if it’s high-grade but low-density like, for example, sunlight. This can be collected by cheap, efficient collectors with a very long period of development behind them, and all we have to do is collect the output. What are these wonderful gadgets called? They are called plants.
FC,
Wish we had some king of green technology that would take CO2 from the air, say by use of solar energy, and store it reliably and cheaply on a mass scale in some form, maybe complex sugars compounds, that we could then easily break down and release the stored energy on demand.
king = kind